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LIBRARY OF PRINCETON 


THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


BS2424 .1.R17 
VIRGIN BIRTH; A STUDY OF THE 

ARGUMENT, FOR AND AGAINST, BY 
RAMSAY, PH.D, 





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https://archive.org/details/virginbirthstudyOOrams_0 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


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The Virgin B 


A Study of the Argument, 
For and Against 


/ By 
F, PIERCE’RAMSAY, Pu. D. 





New YorzE CHICAGO 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, mcmxxvi, by 
FLEMING H, REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


DEDICATED 
to 
MARY ELLEN (MEBANE) RAMSAY, 
whose presence was, 
whose memory 1s, 
my inspiration 


Rib \ 
Net ‘ 
Gi iy 
iy i 





PREFACE 


T is a time of inquiry and controversy. LEar- 
| nest minds differ. How shall they help one 
another? 

Not by impugning motives or belittling argu- 
ments; nor by silence. They can help one another 
by discussion; by each presenting his views and 
reasons, and by all hearing with respect and weigh- 
ing with solicitude. For who can seek for the 
truth without solicitude? and who can reason with 
his brothers without respect? 

In this spirit this book is offered as at least a 
contribution to that fraternal debate which is the 
only way to peace. If any will point out to me its 
defects, I will thank them. If any get help out of 
it, I shall be grateful. 


Bi Pas 
Staten Island, 
N.Y. 


“Dr. Ramsay has brought @ wealth of scholar- 
ship to this task. The dominant thought in the 
mind of the author, which is clearly displayed in 
the book itself, was a desire to bring forth from the 
Holy Scriptures what is the clear teaching concern- 
ing this important doctrine of evangelical faith. 
The presentation is forceful, cumulative and con- 
vincing.”—Walter D. Buchanan, D.D., Pastor, 
Broadway Presbyterian Church, New York City. 


“The book displays scholarship as well as liter- 
ary grace, I have re-read some parts of it several 
times. With the general contention of the book I 
would find myself in some disagreement, but I com- 
mend the author’s conciliatory manner of approach- 
ing the question, his effort to state both sides, and 
his evident irenic spirit. It is a scholarly argu- 
ment.” —Henry Sloane Coffin, D.D., Pastor, Madi- 
son Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City. 


Contents 


I 
THE VIRGIN BirtH: INTRODUCTORY . II 
II 
THE VIRGIN BIRTH: OLD TESTAMENT 
PPE CTATION Ur tivet thick coy coum CEL 
III 
Tue VircIn BirtH: NEw TESTAMENT 
REISS EMEC 88 cys tae een Ped OMAK ao 
IV 
THE VIRGIN BrirTH: DOCTRINAL SiIc- 
CAMO HG ee) Gay haem aay vnc ee) ts GO 
V 


THE VIRGIN BirtH: (Conclusion) . . 100 


yar? fe a a 
Abe iy 
ae ; 
oN y 


fa fa 
same 
or: Sy, vt i 

Va ae oe 





I 
INTRODUCTORY 


T is held by some that Jesus Christ was begot- 
l ten by a man and born of a woman in the or- 
dinary way. They may admit that there were 
some influences or forces in His origin of a more 
or less extraordinary nature; but they deny that 
there was such an exception in His case that phy- 
siologically He was without a human father. Those 
who hold this view may say that they are not under 
obligations to prove it, but only to keep others 
from disproving it. ‘They may sit still, and ask 
that evidence be brought to overthrow it. 

But if Jesus Christ is Himself extraordinary 
in His capacities and powers, so extraordinary as 
to be an exception to human beings generally in 
what He is, He may also be an exception in how He 
came to be. The higher the place we ascribe to 
Him, the greater becomes the possibility that there 
may be something in His origin that will help to 
explain His uniqueness. The miracle of His per- 
sonality may make the miracle of His origin a 
question. It is unscientific, then, for those who 
give to Him a unique position above all men to sit 
still and refuse themselves to inquire whether there 
may not be something unique in His origin; and if 
there is something unique in His origin, what it is. 


On the other hand, there are those who hold that 
11 


12 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


Jesus Christ had no human father, although He had 
a human mother. Those who hold this view can- | 
not claim to establish the fact on the mere ground 
that the fact is necessary to explain or account for 
the uniqueness in the personality of Jesus. Ad-— 
mitted that there must be something unique in His 
origin, that unique thing may not be His birth from 
a virgin while she was still a virgin. The only 
scientific method, is to seek for the evidences of the 
fact, if such evidences there are, and to rest belief 
in the fact on the evidences for the fact. If we 
knew this extraordinary thing in His origin, we 
might infer that there would be something extraor- 
dinary in His person; but we cannot reason back 
from effect to cause so certainly. A given cause 
can have but one effect; but a given effect may have 
one or another cause. If we find Jesus Christ to be 
an exception in powers and character, we may in- 
deed infer something exceptional in His origin; but 
just what that exceptional thing must be we cannot 
infer. 

It is therefore obligatory upon those who hold to 
His Virgin Birth to show evidence that He was thus 
born, and adequate evidence. In the absence of 
such evidence it is strictly scientific to withhold 
belief in the fact; and those are not to be con- 
demned as unreasonable or unduly skeptical who 
remain in doubt until the adequate evidence is 
produced. Surely if so unique an event took place 
and is of essential importance to full faith in Jesus 
Christ that adequate evidence will be available. 

There is, therefore, but one course for us all to 
follow. We must examine and weigh the evidences 


INTRODUCTORY; 13 


bearing on the question, determined to find the 
truth, whatever that may be. If the evidence shows 
that He was virgin born, then it would be a pity for 
us not to find it out; and give the fact its full sig- 
nificance in our system of truth. If the evidence 
is such as to leave the question indeterminable, we 
must be content with our ignorance, accepting so 
much fact as is given and no more, with all intel- 
lectual humility. And if the evidence shuts us up 
to the rejection of His Virgin Birth, let us rejoice to 
discover that this superstition has hitherto be- 
clouded the nature of His work and Character, and 
to come into clearer comprehension of what He 
really is and does. The truth cannot take from us 
any worthy belief. 

I aim, therefore, first of all, to make inquiry for 
all the evidence, and to sift it and weigh it. I 
cannot assume that there is nothing to be found 
with a bearing on the question in the Old Testa- 
ment, and nothing in the New Testament outside 
of the Gospels, and nothing in the Gospels outside 
of Matthew and Luke. And I must not by forced 
interpretation make that out to be evidence which 
is not evidence at all. My first business is to get 
the evidence. The absence of evidence may itself 
be evidence; but I must first sweep the field of 
possible evidence clean, before I conclude for the 
absence of evidence. I will therefore search the 
Scripture through. 

But here arises a question, whether Scripture is 
historic, whether it is throughout trustworthy his- 
‘tory, or to what extent it is trustworthy history; 


14 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


and to take a position on this question may itself _ 
be equivalent to deciding the question of the Virgin 
Birth in advance. One mind may hold such gen- 
eral views of Scripture that, if a single isolated 
statement anywhere in the Bible affirms the Virgin 
Birth, such isolated statement would be to him suf- 
ficient evidence; another mind may hold such 
views in general of Scripture that a definite state- 
ment in even several places, and an integral part 
of the narrative where such statements occur, 
would not be to him sufficient evidence. It seems 
to me, therefore, the better course to hear the wit- 
nesses first, and then pass upon their competency. 

I will therefore endeavor to get what is said, and 
to estimate the weight of it as we proceed, post- 
poning a decision and returning to make a decision, 
on the validity of supposed evidence, until we have 
the total evidence before us, sifted and weighed, and 
can make our decision on its adequacy or inade- 
quacy as a whole. It may be that in this process 
we shall get some well grounded estimate of the 
reliability of Scripture in general. 

If our inquiry should lead us to the conclusion 
that the evidence is not adequate for certifying to 
us so extraordinary a fact, this negative conclusion 
will itself have an important place in our general 
estimate of the worth of Scripture, and of the teach- 
ings of Scripture; and may be able to construct or 
reconstruct a system of beliefs. 

But then we shall have the task of holding in re- 
straint the tendency to abandon too much when 
we are forced to abandon something of what we 


INTRODUCTORY. 15 


have held before; and to inquire what of the Chris- 
tian system remains. 

On the other hand, if we conclude in favor of the 
Virgin Birth, as an adequately attested fact, we 
shall then need to inquire into the bearing of this 
fact on this and that teaching, and place the fact in 
our system of beliefs. 

But it will remain for us to consider objections 
to the fact, when we have seen it in its relations and 
bearings. 

All these steps are necessary to a satisfactory 
examination of this question. I must, therefore, 
warn some of my readers that the discussion will 
be largely, especially in the earlier part of it, rather 
a severely critical examination of evidence, requir- 
ing minute investigations into the significance of 
Hebrew and Greek words and sentences. I cannot 
make my book readable except to those who are 
willing to take pains. Have patience with me, 
and by your patience help me through the hard 
and difficult part. But if you are not willing to 
work and think, shut up the book, and give it to 
some one who is willing to labor for light. 

I do not mean to claim for myself too much. I 
do claim the ability to make at least a contribution 
to the investigation of this question; otherwise I 
would not presume to write this book. Iam liable 
to error; and I am liable to make mistakes in my 
search for the truth. My work is a contribution; 
let some better mind improve upon it. Butif I can 
help some earnest student in his inquiry, and guide 
some devout mind to peace in this agitation, if I 


16 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


can but point the direction to the safe landing out 
of this sea of controversy, I am content. 

And I do confess to a profound faith in Jesus 
Christ, whom I accept as the Lord of my life, and 
to whom and to whose faithful people I crave to do 
some little service. 


II 
OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATIONS 


I. THe EXPECTATION IN GENESIS 


OME people will come to Genesis, believing 
S it to be a book by Moses that gives a true 
history of certain origins; and some will 
come to it, believing it to be a comparatively late 
compilation of stories that had grown up before 
being committed to writing, and were altered and 
adopted by certain religious teachers to purposes of 
written instruction, but that are in no proper sense 
narratives of fact. And some will come to Genesis, 
believing it to be a compilation of stories that origi- 
nated in close connection with the events and from 
the witnesses of the events, that were handed down 
with scrupulous accuracy till compiled, and that 
were compiled with scrupulous fidelity, and there- 
fore believing the book to be trustworthy history. 
Whether one makes the book Mosaic in its origin, 
or post-Mosaic, or pre-Mosaic; and whether one ac- 
cepts it as good history or regards it as largely 
myth: here it is now, and here it was before the 
New Testament came into existence; and it was ac- 
cepted by the Jews generally as an integral part of 
their Scriptures. Let us see what it would teach 
them. 


Gen. 3: contains a story about Adam and Eve 
17 


18 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. 
Adam and Eve had been created, and placed in the 

Garden to cultivate it; and they had been com- 
manded not to eat of a certain tree of knowing good 

and evil on pain of death. There came to the woman 
Eve a serpent, that persuaded her that eating of 
this tree would not bring death but wonderful en- 

lightenment, and induced her to eat of it. She in 

turn induced the man Adam to eat of it also. They 
became ashamed in their nakedness, which they 
endeavored to cover by sewing fig leaves together; 

and when they heard the sound of their Great 
Friend coming to them in the cool of the day, they 
hid away among the trees of the Garden. But He 

called them to account, and heard the excuse of the 
man, and then the confession of the woman. There- 

upon He addressed the serpent, the woman, and 

the man, each in turn, and gave sentence. He sen- 
tenced the serpent to perpetual degradation; the 

woman to pain in her function of child-bearing; 

and the man to toil and death. Adam gave his wife 

a name that indicated that she was to become the 

mother of the race; and Jehovah God made clothing 
for them out of the skins of animals. And then He 

expelled them from the Garden. 

In 3: 15, in sentencing the serpent, Jehovah God 
said, ‘“‘ And I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he 
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his 
heel.” Whether we take this story as a poetic 
myth, or as a narrative of fact as the fact appeared 
to Adam and Eve, here it is; and here it was in the 
sacred literature. What is the meaning of the 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 19 


promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise, or 
crush, the head of the serpent? 

There is to be perpetual enmity between the two 
races, the serpent and his seed and the woman and 
her seed. What the serpent was, and what his 
seed was to be, are questions rather raised than 
answered; but the serpent, whether the being who 
appeared in the form of a serpent in this story or 
is symbolized by a serpent in this story, is the great 
enemy of the woman and her seed; and to crush 
the head of this great enemy and his seed would be 
something like salvation for her and hers. It may 
be that the seed of the serpent will include the seed 
of the man, if the seed of the man should turn out 
to have a serpent-like nature; but standing here in 
the midst of the story, we cannot be sure of its fu- 
ture development. 

We have assumed that the seed of the woman 
means her descendants; but does it mean the joint 
descendants of her and the man? It may be so. 
But we observe that the seed of the man is not 
mentioned in the story. If the seed of the man 
means the joint seed of the man and woman, the 
ability of this seed to crush the head of the serpent 
is by reason of its being her seed, and not by rea- 
son of its being his seed. It is the seed of the 
woman that shall crush the head of the serpent. 

This may be figurative language. If so, why 
does the figure assign to the woman’s seed the 
crushing of the serpent’s head, and not to the man’s 
seed, or to the seed of the man and woman? 

The meaning of the promise is obscure; but in the 


20 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


obscurity one distinction is clear, that the crushing 
of the head of the serpent is not assigned to Adam’s 
seed, but to the woman’s seed, whether to all her 
descendants, or to some of them, or to one of them. 
Much is obscure, but this one thing is clear in all 
the obscurity, that the woman’s seed is put forward 
for crushing the head of the serpent and his ceed, 
and not the man’s seed. It is the seed of the woman 
that shall crush the head of the serpent. 

In Gen. 4: 1 and 25 Eve says at the birth of her 
first son, “I have gotten a man with the help of 
Jehovah,” and at the birth of Seth after Cain killed 
Abel, ‘‘ God hath appointed me another seed instead 
of Abel.”” Even if we accept as correct the render- 
ing given of the first passage, instead of “I have 
gotten a man, Jehovah,” or “I have gotten a man, 
the Coming One,” the passage indicates that she in 
some way took the birth of Cain to be a fulfilment 
of the promise of 3:15. And the second passage 
indicates that, Abel having taken the place of Cain 
in her confidence, Seth now took the place of Abel, 
and that she still looked for some fulfilment of the 
promised in the birth of her children. It is now evi- 
dent that she did not understand the promise to 
mean her offspring to the exclusion of Adam’s off- 
Spring, and that she did not fully understand the 
promise. It still remains that the promise contains 
the peculiar mention of her seed instead of his seed 
or their seed, and the exact significance of this pe- 
culiarity has not yet appeared. So far we have 
the idea of a promised seed that will bring the de- 
struction of the serpent at the cost of great hurt to 
himself, a seed in some special sense the woman’s. 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 1 


In Gen. 12: 1-3 is recorded the first great prom- 
ise of Abram, that Jehovah would make of him a 
great nation, and that in him all the families of the 
earth should be blessed. In verse 7 the promise 
is enlarged, “‘ Unto thy seed will I give this land.” 
In 13: 14-17 the promise is confirmed as to both the 
numerous seed and the land. While nothing is said 
about his seed crushing the head of the serpent, we 
must not count Gen. 3: 15 as unknown to Abram. 
It stood in the records inherited by him, although 
now there is a new development of a promise to his 
seed; but whether the two seeds are to be one seed, 
or to be distinct, each having its distinctive task, 
remains yet to be made clear. But one thing is now 
clear, that Abram’s seed is not to be mankind in 
general, but a selected part of mankind. 

In Gen. 15: Jehovah converts the promise to 
Abram and his seed into a Covenant. This seed, 
in which all nations are to be blessed, is itself to 
suffer something of hardship, which reminds us of 
Gen. 3:15. But it is remarkable that Abram is 
represented as being at the time childless, and that 
his promised seed is yet to be born. From Gen. 
25: 1-5 we infer that he had at the time sons by 
Koturah, his concubine; but for some reason they 
were not counted at all as his seed of promise. 
And Ishmael, his son by Hagar, a substitute wife, 
is also rejected from being the seed of promise 
(Gen. 17: 18-21). And Isaac is chosen, the son of 
Sarah, the wife. 

These four things are true of Isaac. In the first 


ae 


22 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


place, his mother was wife in the fullest sense. 
Thus was honor put upon the wife as over against 
the substitute wife and the concubine. In the sec- 
ond place, he was a son of circumcision; Abraham 
was circumcised before he begot Isaac. As circum- 
cision was the consecration specially of the male 
organ of generation, it is assumed or taught that 
the human male needs some special purification in 
order to become the progenitor of the promised 
seed. But the woman was not circumcised. Does 
this hint that human corruption is transmitted 
through the male and not through the female?) In 
the third place, while Abraham is the father of 
Isaac, yet the birth was miraculous, the natural 
powers of fatherhood and motherhood being now 
dead, so that Isaac appears in the history as in a 
special sense a son of God. And in the fourth 
place, his mother had never had any child before; 
so that she might be taken as prefiguring a woman 
impregnated by God himself. Undoubtedly these 
are but hints, if they are so much as hints, towards 
what mystery was wrapped up in the protevan- 
gelium, the promise of Gen. 3: 15. One cannot say 
that here are indications of a purely virgin birth 
yet to be; but one feels that here are indications 
of something extraordinary yet to be. 

And we find that special care was taken in select- 
ing the mothers of the chosen race, as in the case 
of the wives of Isaac and Jacob. 

Genesis does not give us much, and we may say 
does not give us anything decisive, on this matter; 
but at the most only some germinal truth, which 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 23 


in the course of development may yet become the 
doctrine of a virgin birth. 


II, THE MESSIANIC EXPECTATION 
In our study of Genesis we saw an expectation 
of salvation through a seed yet to be born; and we 
have seen that this seed is not the whole human 
race, but is within Abraham’s descendants through 
Isaac and Jacob, and that this seed is to have 
something remarkable in its birth, and to be in 
some distinctive sense the seed of the woman. This 
expectation becomes more closely defined as we 
proceed down through the Old Testament. 
We may take as our new point of departure I 
Sam. 2: 10. It is the last verse of Hannah’s hymn 
of rejoicing over the birth of Samuel: 


“They that strive with Jehovah shall be broken to 
pieces ; 

Against them will be thunder in heaven: 

Jehovah will judge the ends of the earth; 

And he will give strength unto his king, 

And exalt the horn of his Anointed.” 


Here are two new ideas, the idea in Jehovah’s 
King, and the idea in Jehovah’s Anointed; for here- 
tofore Jehovah was himself to be the king of 
Israel, and heretofore the priest was the anointed 
one. Now there is to be a king under Jehovah, and 
he, rather than the highpriest, is to be Jehovah’s 
anointed. The anointing was a symbol of special 
appointment and enduement for office. And in 
verse 35, he promises to raise up a faithful priest, 
who “ shall walk before mine Anointed.”’ Thus the 
Anointed King is distinguished from the priest. 


24 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


Now this Hebrew word anointed is spelled out in 
English messiah; and we might well substitute 
Messiah for Anointed in the above passage, and in 
other like passages. So the Greek word christos, 
or Christ, has the same meaning. The Hebrew 
Messiah, the Greek Christ, and the English 
Anointed have the same meaning. 

The first of the Messiahs, Jehovah’s kings of 
Israel, was Saul (I Sam. 12: 3,5). Then Samuel 
was sent to the family at Bethlehem to anoint one 
of Jesse’s sons to this office (16:1, 6); and he 
anointed David. David did not at once displace 
Saul (I Sam. 24: 6, 10; 26:9, 11, 16, 23), but as 
long as Saul lived acknowledged him as the Mes- 
siah (II Sam. 1: 14, 16); but afterward was by 
solemn anointing acknowledged as the king of 
Israel by the elders of the people (II Sam. 5:3). 

In II Sam. 7: a special revelation is given to 
David, that his shall be a perpetual dynasty, so 
that forever a descendant of his shall be on the 
throne of Israel (verses 12-16). Moreover, Jeho- 
vah promised that the son of David should be Jeho- 
vah’s son and he would be the father of David’s 
son (verse 1-4). We now have a perpetual dynasty 
of kings of Israel, each Jehovah’s Messiah, and 
standing to him as son to a father. Here is the 
idea that the Messiah is to be, in some special 
sense, Jehovah’s son. And hereafter David is 
called Jehovah’s Messiah (II Sam. 19: 21; 22: 52; 
2924 MAISON Chr 642), 

This idea of the Messiah and the Messianic 
kingdom bulks largely in the Psalms. Take Ps. 
OAs 6 ae he 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 25 


The kings of the earth set themselves, 

And the rulers take counsel together, 

Against Jehovah, and against his Messiah. 
2 2K x x x * * 


Yet have I set my king 

Upon my holy hill of Zion. 

I will tell you of the decree: 

Jehovah said to me, Thou art my son; 
This day have I begotten thee. 

Note especially that the Messiah is Jehovah’s 
begotten son. He is to have universal dominion, 
and to rule in righteousness, being Jehovah’s king, 
set upon the throne by him; but especially is he to 
be the begotten Son of God. 

These ideas occur again and again throughout 
the Psalms. Jehovah is King (10: 16), but the 
Messiah is “his king,” appointed by him to rule 
over his kingdom (18:50; 20:6). The Messiah 
is even called God (45: 6), with just how much 
significance we cannot say; but from being his Son 
he is made God himself. Along with this comes in 
the idea of perpetual continuance. Ps. 45: 6, 

Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever: 

A scepter of equity is the scepter of thy kingdom. 
And this idea of perpetual continuance is empha- 
sized in Ps. 72. Here there is expectation of a 
Messiah who will have no successor, but will in his 
own person continue forever. 

Compare also 84:9; 89: 38, 51; 132: 10, 17; 
and other like passages, especially 145: 13. The 
Psalter develops the idea of the Messiah and his 
kingdom, until he becomes the perpetual king of 
an everlasting kingdom; he is raised to the dignity 
of the begotten Son of God; he is even made God. 


26 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


When we turn to the Prophets, we shall find 
much, more or less obscure, concerning this Hope | 
of Israel. Let us take Isaiah. Our attention can- 
not but be arrested by 7: 14, ‘‘ Therefore the Lord 
himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall 
conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name 
Immanuel.” Immanuel is Hebrew for “ God with 
us.” Leaving some questions about this passage 
for future consideration, we now remark, that this 
is a Sign, an indication or proof of the authenticity 
of the prophet’s message; that to the prophet’s 
mind there was something remarkable in that a 
“virgin ” should bear a son; and that the signifi- 
cance of the name Immanuel applied to her son 
was meant to indicate something worthy of special 
attention. The one impression that the passage 
unmistakably was intended to make is that there 


*. is to be something extraordinary about the birth of 


some great person. 

With this passage we must put 9:6, 7, “ For 
unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and 
the government shall be upon his shoulder: and 
his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, 
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 
Of the increase of his government and of peace 
there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, 
and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to up- 
hold it with justice and with righteousness from 
henceforth even forever.’ One can hardly resist 
the conviction that this has to do with the same 
birth as 7: 14. And that this Child is to sit “ upon 
the throne of David, and upon his kingdom,” iden- 
tifies him with the Messiah. The names of the 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 27 


Child are worthy of our meditation: Wonderful 
(miraculous); Counselor; Mighty God (which 
ascribes deity to him even more emphatically than 
Ps. 45:6); Everlasting Father (or, Father of 
Eternity, which clinches his deity); Prince of Peace 
(which identifies this Child with the person de- 
scribed in 2: 2-4 and its parallel in Mi. 4: 1-3). 
The Messianic idea has now been developed into 
a definite personality who is both the son of David 
and the Son of God, being God as well as man. 

11: 1-5, which begins ‘‘ And there shall come a 
shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out 
of his roots shall bear fruit,” manifestly handling 
the same conception as 7: 14 and 9: 6, teaches us 
that this great Coming One will be a son of David’s 
fallen house. Here the human is made prominent, 
as in 9: 6 the divine, in this paradoxical person- 
ality. 

This union of the divine and the human is ex- 
pressed or assumed in many passages; and seems 
to cause no embarrassment to the prophets. 

Although Isaiah for some reason is chary of 
using the term Messiah (though he is full of the 
idea), yet the term is used by the prophets. An 
instance is Hab. 3:13, 


Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, 
For the salvation of thine Anointed. 


Jer. 23: 5 develops the conception of the Branch 
(cf. Isa. 11: 1) so also 33: 15f. And Lam. 4: 20 
again uses Messiah as in Samuel. 

Passing over Ezekiel and Daniel and the other 
Prophets, though rich in material, we will con- 


28 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


clude with some examination of Zechariah. He | 
has much to say about the Branch in 3:8 and — 
6:12. Take especially the conception of 6: 12, 13, 
‘Cand he shall be a priest upon his throne,” that 
the king of Israel shall also be the priest, which ~ 
will greatly help us to understand the paradox of 
the humiliation and the glory of the Messiah. In 
9:9 we see the King not as a warrior, but as a 
peaceful administrator of justice, and in 14: 17 we 
see him as the all-conquering King. 

The Old Testament created the conception of 
a Coming One, who should be divine and human, 
a conqueror and a sufferer, a king and a priest, 
God and man, a woman’s Child and the Son of 
God. 


TI: WISATAH 87 2014 


The passage deserves special examination (Isa. 
7: 10-17): “ And Jehovah spake again unto Ahaz, 
saying, Ask thee a sign of Jehovah thy God; ask it 
either in the depth, or in the height above. But 
Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt 
Jehovah. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of 
David: Is it a small thing for you to weary men, 
that ye will weary my God also? Therefore the 
Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin 
shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his 
name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, 
when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the 
good. For before the child shall know to refuse 
the evil and choose the good, the land whose two 
kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. Jehovah 
will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 29 


upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, 
from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah 
even the king of Assyria. Mi 

The prophet offers in Jehovah’s name a sign to 
king Ahaz, something that would confirm the 
prophet’s advice against alliance with Assyria, a 
miraculous indication; and he offers to give this 
sign anywhere that Ahaz might select, even to give 
it in the sea or in the sky. Ahaz declined to ask a 
sign, hypocritically pretending that he was not 
willing thus to make trial of Jehovah as if he 
doubted him. Then the prophet, after rebuking 
the hypocrisy, said, ‘“‘ The Lord himself will give 
you a sign,” a miraculous indication. This is the 
first point: the prophet proposes a miracle, a won- 
der, something extraordinary. 

He proceeds to tell what the sign shall be: “‘ be- 
hold, the virgin.” The word “the” is in the 
Hebrew and in the Septuagint version’s Greek, 
though there is some question whether in the Eng- 
lish idiom the rendering should be “ the virgin” 
or “a virgin.” If the proper rendering is ‘the 
virgin,” it would seem probable that some particu- 
lar virgin was referred to, who was known to Ahaz 
and Isaiah. I surmise a daughter of Ahaz that he 
was withholding from marriage, or some princess 
or maiden that he was refusing to let become the 
wife of his son. But this is conjecture; and our 
interpretation must not build upon conjecture. 

We need to examine carefully the meaning of the 
Hebrew word here rendered “ virgin,” and of two 
other terms. One is naarah, girl, fem. of naar, boy. 
If this term naarah (or naara) is used, it does not 


x 


30 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


imply either virginity or the lack of virginity; but 
the term may be used generally of a young woman, 
cf. Gen. 24: 14. 

Another term is betkulah, which is used 50 times 
in the Old Testament, and its related term ~ 
bethulim is used 10 times. This bethulim seems to 


*. be always used in the sense of virginity. Bethulah 


is certainly the common Hebrew word for virgin; 
but that this is its distinctive meaning in all cases 
is doubtful. When Jb. 31:1 says, “ How then 
shall I look upon a bethulah?”’, is it certain that 
he had in mind distinctly a virgin? In the phrase 
“young man and bethulah” (Deut. 32:25; II 
Chr.'36: 17>) Ps. 148:,12;; Am: 8:13; Isayzaaee 
Jer. 51:22; Lam. 1:18; 2:21) is not bethulah 
equivalent simply to young woman? Bethulah may 
be used of any woman who is a virgin, of whatever 
age; but to stress the idea of virginity something 
may be added, as in Gen. 24: 16, “neither had any 
man known her.” Soin Judg. 21:12. And in order 
to stress the idea of youth, some term is added, as 
in Judg. 21:12; I Ki. 1:2; Est. 2:2, 3. In the 
phrase ‘‘ Young man and bethulah,”’ would be in- 
cluded any man of marital age, say up to forty 
years, and any bethulah up to a like age. We 
therefore want a term that will mean virgin recently 


, become marriageable, without need of an additional 


word to stress either the idea of virginity or of 
youth. 

Let us examine the term, almah. The word is 
used 7 times, not counting the alamoth in the super- 
scription of Ps. 46: and in I Chr. 15: 20. In Gen. 
24: 43, the servant of Abraham, in speaking of 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 31 


Rebekah to her parents and brother, uses the term 
almah, although in verse 14f he had referred to her 
as maara; for he delicately stresses now that she is 
a virgin. Here he is careful not to use an ambigu- 
ous term. In Ex. 2:8 Miriam is called almah. 
Here the word may have implied only her youth or 
her virginity or both. If youth had been the special 
connotation, maarak would probably have been 
used. In Ps. 68: 25, 


“The singers went before, the minstrels followed 
after, 
In the midst of the damsels playing with timbrels,” 


“‘damsels ” translates the pl. of almak. Here cer- 
tainly the poet did not use a term that would not 
imply virgins; but almah is used, because young 
virgins are thought of. In Prov. 30: 19, “ the way 
of a man with a maiden” (almah), virginity is im- 
plied from the next sentence. And of course in 
Cant. 1: 3 and 6: 8 the word means virgins, young 
virgins. 

I am well aware that many Hebraists say that 
the proper word in Hebrew for virgin is bethulah, 
and that almak really means young woman of mar- 
riageable age. But from a careful examination of 
the usage of these two words in their every occur- 
rence, I am convinced that, while bethulah means 
a virgin without emphasizing youth especially, and 
is sometimes used loosely without distinctly imply- 
ing virginity, almah is never used without strictly 


implying virginity as well as youth; and the usage * 


of a word must prevail over its etymology for de- 
termining its meaning. And it is not certain that 


32 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


the etymology of either of these terms points to_ 
virgin or away from it as its meaning. I am con- 
tent to agree with the Greek scholars who trans- 
lated the Old Testament from the Hebrew into the 
Greek some centuries before Christ, a translation 
known as the Septuagint. 

Hence the prophet had two words in Hebrew 
that he might use: betkulah, which would have 
meant a virgin of any age, though not with so abso- 
lute a connotation of virginity as might be desir- 
able; and almah, which means a virgin, with impli- 
cation of youth, and, from its usage in Hebrew, 
would seem to have no other possible meaning. This 
is the word that the prophet uses here. When the 
Greek translators came to this word, they had no 
word in Greek of just this meaning, and had to use 
the Greek term that means virgin. If almah had 
meant, as some now contend, a young woman with- 
out implying virginity, they had words in Greek 
that would have expressed this idea; but they used 
none of these words, but used the proper Greek 
term for virgin. And if Isaiah had used a Hebrew 
word that simply meant young woman without im- 
plying virginity, then he would have given to Ahaz 
nothing remarkable at all. For to say that a young 
woman would have a son would not be to say that 
anything remarkable would take place. 

“ Behold, a virgin shall conceive.” It is disputed 
whether this should be rendered shall conceive or 
hath conceived. But this will not greatly affect our 
interpretation; for it would only be to raise the 
question whether the conception had already taken 
place or was yet to take place. It is doubtful 


OLD TESTAMENT EXPECTATION 38 


whether this question is raised and settled by the 
tense used by the prophet. But to say a virgin 
conceives, if there is something extraordinary 
meant, is to say that a virgin while still a virgin 
conceives. This is precisely the miraculous ele- 
ment in the sign. 

‘‘And bear a son.” If Isaiah was speaking of 
a definite virgin, the fact that the child was to be 
a son and not a daughter might enter in as a subor- 
dinate element in the miracle. 

“And shall call his name Immanuel” might in 
some connections mean merely to express the faith 
of the namer that God is with us, with his people, 
that being the meaning of the word Immanuel. But 
in the connection in which it here occurs, it must 
at least mean that this child is a sign or promise 
that at some time a child who is God with us shall 
be born. In other words, here is an unmistakable 
prediction of the birth from a virgin of a child who 
will be God. 

The prophet goes on to say that before the child 
shall be old enough to discriminate between foods, 
the land of Syria and Ephraim will be forsaken, the 
enemies against whom Ahaz was seeking Assyria’s 
help, and that the Assyrian power will come against 
Ahaz. This implies that the sign will take place in 
the immediate future. But inasmuch as Ahaz de- 
clined to ask for a sign, and there is no record in 
Isaiah that this sign was actually given, it is pos- 
sible to understand that here was merely the offer 
of such a sign, but that the miracle did not then 
actually occur. But if so, some such miracle is here 


34 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


foreshadowed to occur in the process of Israel’s sal- 
vation. | 

The Davidic dynasty is failing to produce right- 
eous kings in succession by the ordinary processes 
of propagation. Ahaz himself is a conspicuous in- 
stance of this failure. Such a man cannot be the 
ideal Messiah, nor bring in the ideal deliverance 
and righteousness. And the prophet is driven to 
turn away from all sons of David begotten by 
human fathers, to give a closer definition to “ the 
seed of the woman ” of the protevangelium of Gen. 
3: 15, and to expect that the Savior will be a vir- 
gin’s son and not a man’s, and will be God with 
us and not mere man with us. Thus will the Old 
Testament expectation be realized in a Messiah 
who is God. 

Such being the expectation raised by the Old 
Testament teaching, we may be sure that the men 
of the New Testament, claiming fulfilment, will tell 
of some such miraculous birth. ‘There is no need 


* to go outside of Old Testament ideas and teachings 


to find the conception of the Virgin Birth. Those 
who accept Jesus as the Messiah of the Old Testa- 
ment expectation must at least raise the question 
whether he was virgin-born. 


lit j 
NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 


I. THE TESTIMONY OF MARY 


F the Virgin Birth actually took place, there 
was in the nature of the case one witness that 
might testify to the fact, Mary herself. Let 


us first hear her testimony, which is given in Lk. 
1; 26-56 and 2: 4-7: 


Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent 
from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to 
a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, 
of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was 
Mary. And he came in unto her, and said, Hail, 
thou art highly favored, the Lord is with thee. But 
she was greatly troubled at the saying, and cast in her 
mind what manner of salutation this might be. And 
the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast 
found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt con- 
ceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt 
call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall 
be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord 
shall give unto him the throne of his father David: 
and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; 
and of his kingdom there shall be no end. And Mary 
said unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know 
not a man? And the angel answered and said unto 
her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the 
power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: 
wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall 
be called the Son of eae behold, Elisabeth thy 


86 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


kinswoman, she also hath conceived a son in her old 
age; and this is the sixth month with her that was | 
called barren. For no word from God shall be void 
of power. And Mary said, Behold, the handmaid of 
the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And 
the angel departed from her. 

And Mary arose in these days and went into the 
hill country with haste, unto a city of Judah; and en- 
tered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elisabeth. 
And it came to pass, when Elisabeth heard the saluta- 
tion of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisa- 
beth was filled with the Holy Spirit ; and she lifted up 
her voice with a loud cry, and said, Blessed art thou 
among women, and blessed ts the fruit of thy womb. 
And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord 
should come unto me? For behold, when the voice 
of thy salutation came into mine ears, the babe leaped 
in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that be- 
lieved; for there shall be a fulfilment of the things 
which have been spoken to her from the Lord. ' And 
Mary said, 

My soul doth magnify the Lord, 

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 

For he hath looked upon the low estate of his 
hand maid: 

For behold, from henceforth all nations shall 
call me blessed. 

For he that is mighty hath done to me great 
things ; 

And holy is his name. 

And his mercy is unto generations and genera- 
tions 

Of them that fear him. 

He hath showed strength with his arm; 

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of 
their heart. 

He hath put down princes from their thrones, 

And hath exalted them of low degree. 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 37 


The hungry he hath filled with good things ; 

And the rich he hath sent empty away. 

He hath given help to Israel his servant, 

That he might remember mercy 

(As he spake unto our fathers) 

Toward Abraham and his seed for ever. 
And Mary abode with her about three months, and 
returned unto her house. 

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the 
city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, 
which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the 
house and family of David; to enroll himself with 
Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with 
child. And it came to pass, while they were there, 
the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered. 
And she brought forth her firstborn son; and she 
wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a 
manger, because there was no room for them in the 
inn. 


4 


Mary testifies, that at the time of the visitation 
of the angel she was a pure virgin, and that she 
became with child without having intercourse with 
a man; but her testimony to this as a fact would 
not in itself establish the fact beyond all doubt, 
even if we believed in her veracity. In such a case, 
we desire clear and conclusive evidence. Her 
direct testimony is at least one and a necessary ele- 
ment in the evidence for the fact. 

She testifies that she had a visit from the angel 
Gabriel. She would infer that it was an angel that 
spoke to her, and remember that he called himself 
Gabriel. How she could tell that it was an angel, 
we cannot say; but that whoever spoke to her 
called himself Gabriel she could tell. But Gabriel 


38 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


would be identified in her mind with the Gabriel of | 
Dan. 8: 16 and 9: 21, who foretold to Daniel the 
coming of the Messiah (9:25). Her report of 
what passed between the angel and herself natu- 
rally omits something; but it is evident that she was 
impressed with the dignity of the messenger, and 
the solemnity and greatness of his message, even 
before he declared it. It troubled her humility that 
she was, in some special sense, so highly favored 
of the Lord, that such a messenger should salute 
her in such terms. 

She testifies that he specially and plainly said 
that she was going to conceive in her womb, and 
bear a son, and call his name Joshua (which in 
Greek spelled Jesus). Note the three points: con- 
ception; the birth of a son; and the name Jesus. 
She testifies that all these three points were told her 
in this interview. Moreover she testifies that she 
was told then by Gabriel, that her son should be 
great; that he should be called the Son of the Most 
High; that he should be the successor to the throne 
of David; and that he should reign forever. Notice 
the points of importance: that he should be the Son 
of God; and that he should be the Messiah of the 
Davidic line. 
| In explanation of how she should become a 
_ mother without intercourse with a man, the angel 
told her that the Holy Spirit should come upon her, 
and the power of the Most High overshadow her; 
that the thing thus begotten in her should be a holy 
thing; and that this holy thing thus begotten should 
for that reason be called the Son of God. It is im- 
portant to note that the child was to be called the 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY = 39 


Son of God because it was begotten by God as its 
father and not by a human father. 

Mary also testifies that she was told that Elisa- 
beth was then in her sixth month of pregnancy with 
a son (John the Baptist); that she at once has- 
tened to visit Elisabeth; and that, when Elisabeth 

‘heard her salutation, she immediately declared that 
Mary was the mother of her Lord, and that her 
own babe leaped in her womb for joy at the salu- 
tation. 

Mary testifies that she herself broke out in a 
hymn of praise to God for his condescending grace 
to her, a hymn which is but a new version of Han- 
nah’s hymn as contained in I Sam, 2: 1-11. 

Mary remained with her cousin Elisabeth three 
months, or nearly up to the birth of Elisabeth’s 
son, and then returned to her own home in Naza- 
reth. 

And Mary testifies to the birth of her son, her 
firstborn, in Bethlehem, and to laying him, 
wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a manger. 

The story is manifestly Mary’s own story; she 
believed it herself to be true; she was guileless, 
simple, humble, and utterly sincere. She believed 
herself to be the virgin mother of the Christ. 

This is a woman’s story. It goes into the how 
of the conception, relates the communing of the 
two prospective mothers, and mentions about the - 
infant’s swaddling clothes. The character of Mary 
as it here appears is thoroughly consistent with her 
character as it appears elsewhere in the Gospels. 
The poem, seeing that it is an adaptation of Han- 
nah’s hymn, is not beyond Mary’s power of com- 


4 


40 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


position. The story does not have any element that | 
might cause in us a suspicion of its sincerity; its 
modesty fails to attempt to paint at all the com- 
ing upon her of divine power; and it does not bring ~ 
in a single unnecessary wonder of any sort in con- 
nection with the conception, the nine months of 
pregnancy, or the birth itself. The story is modest, 


_simple, straightforward, sincere, consistent, and 


reasonable. 

That is, if such a thing ever did happen it could 
hardly have happened and been witnessed in a more 
credible way. For note the confirmatory facts: that 
the aged Elisabeth was with child; that each 
woman was to bear a son (if one had turned out to 
be a daughter, see how the whole complex story 
would have been discredited); the acknowledgment 
of Elisabeth, recognizing Mary as the mother of 
the Messiah; and the combination of circum- 
stances eventuating in the birth of the child in 
Bethlehem. When we reflect that here was the in- 
dependent revelation to the parents of John the 
Baptist, and to Joseph also, we must admit that if 
Mary herself went through the experiences that she 
here so convincingly relates she would have been 
utterly unreasonable not to have believed herself to 
be indeed the virgin mother of the Christ. 


II, THE TESTIMONY OF JOSEPH 
If the story of the Virgin Birth as reported from 
Mary is true, the testimony of Joseph may confirm 
it. His testimony is given in Mat. 1: 18-25: 


Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: 
When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 41 


before they came together she was found with child of 
the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a 
righteous man, and not willing to make her a public 
example, was minded to put her away privily. But 
when he thought on these things, behold, an angel of 
the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, 
he son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary 
hy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the 
Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son; and 
thou shalt call his name JESUS; for it is he that shall 
save his people from their sins. Now all this is come 
to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
by the Lord through the prophet, saying, 
Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall 
bring forth a son, 
And they shall call his name Immanuel ; 
which is, being interpreted, God with us. And Joseph 
arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord 
commanded him, and took unto him his wife; and he 
knew her not till she had brought forth a son: and he 
called his name JESUS. 


It must be noted that for conceived the margin 
tells us that the Greek means “ begotten.” And 
also we must observe that the terms husband and | 


wife are the Greek terms for “man” and “‘ woman,” ™ 


and do not imply that the marriage had taken place. 

Note the points of the testimony, that Joseph 
and Mary were engaged, to be married; that before 
the marriage he found out that she was with child; 
that he was meditating a private breaking of the 
engagement without, as the law allowed him to do, 
bringing her into court for punishment with death; 
(Lev. 20: 10, the law applying to the betrothed 
persons as well as married persons, probably); that 
while he was thus thinking he had a dream; that 


42 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


in the dream an angel spoke to him; and that he © 
took what the angel said as a message from God. 

In all this there is nothing unreasonable; but we 
can but raise the question whether Joseph was mis- 
taken in considering his dream a revelation from 
God. This we may decide better after seeing what 
he was told by the angel. 

First, the angel called him “son of David.” This 
he was; and this he would be thinking of. It is 
not strange that this should come before him in a 
dream. The remarkable thing is that this thought 
should arise when his mind was troubled over 
Mary’s condition. Had he already had the hope 
that he might be the father of the Messiah, the 
Christ? If so, that hope would seem to him blasted 
by what appeared to be Mary’s infidelity. It was 
into his mind thus troubled that the thought was 
put that he was the son of David, in the line of 
whose descendants the Christ was to be born. 

He received this assurance, that that which was 
begotten in her was not begotten by any human 
father, but by the Holy Spirit. He knew Mary; 
he had had all confidence in her; he had cherished 
all hopes to come from his marriage with her. But 
the fact had forced him to the conclusion that she 
was unworthy; and yet how could he believe that 
she was unworthy? His determination not to bring 
her to justice, although he was a righteous man, 
indicates some doubt after all perhaps, a doubt not 
articulately expressed to himself, yet a real doubt 
of his own conclusion. Here was opened to him a 
solution of his doubt; here was a fact that excul- 
pated Mary, and turned her condition into a ground 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 43 


of greatest expectation, if only Joseph were willing 
not to be the father of the Christ, but his foster 
father. The assurance of this fact came to him in 
his sleep, and remained when he awoke. 

The angel told him that she should bring forth a 
son. If after his marriage with her, she-had brought 
forth a daughter, all the assurance generated in the 
dream would have been shattered; but when she 
did bring forth a son, his assurance was confirmed. 

The angel told him to call the name of the child 
Jesus (Joshua). When he afterward learned from 
Mary that she also had received the same command 
concerning the name of her son, this would be 
another confirmation. | 

It is remarkable that Joseph in a dream could 
receive the conception that this Messianic son was 
not to be a warrior like Joshua had been, but a 
savior of his people from their sins. This concep- 
tion argues for Joseph a mind of deep spirituality 
and of profound insight. 

The angel told him that the child’s birth would 
be in fulfilment of the Virgin prediction of Isa. 
7: 14. Here this passage is linked up with the fact. 
Joseph could hardly have had the conception, if 
the conception was peculiar to his mind; it was 
probably a conception that other minds shared with 
him, although probably there was some haziness 
and uncertainty in their understanding of the Isaiah 
passage. 

I have assumed that the dream was the dream 
of a mind prepared for it by his waking thoughts 
and subconscious hopes and fears. At the same 
time in some way the dream was to Joseph an ob- 


44 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


jective presentation by an angel; and in some way . 
he was made to feel certain of the revelation, and 
he acted upon it. And when he found that it fitted 
in with the more objective revelation that Mary 
received, independently and separately from this 
dream revelation to him, he would have been un- 
reasonable not to believe that he had indeed re- 
ceived a divine communication. 

What is of the greatest consequence to us is 
the close connection of both these revelations with 
the Old Testament predictions. ‘The Genesis ex- 
pectation is realized by it. The Messianic expec- 
tation is realized by it, including the paradoxical 
person of the Christ as both the son of David and 
the Son of God. And the Isaian prediction of the 
Virgin Birth is fulfilled in the fact set forth. In 
other words, the fact is given to us by the witnesses 
as the fulfilment of the Scriptures; and if their 
testimony is to be accepted, it was the fulfilment 
of the Scriptures. 

Here again is the absence of mere wonder for 
display. 


III, THE TESTIMONY OF MARY AND JOSEPH 
CRITICALLY EXAMINED 

Assuming that the accounts in Luke and Mat- 
thew are trustworthy reports of the testimony of 
Mary and Joseph, is their testimony sufficient to 
establish the fact? Does it not boil down to one 
witness and a dream of another, and the one wit- 
ness vitally interested to clear her good name? If 
Mary once thought of the possibility of putting this 
story over, how immense the motive to deception! 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 45 


Is it not conceivable that she invented this expla- 
nation of her condition and gave it to Joseph? 
There lay the predictions to hand for her to seize 
upon and interpret to Joseph; and there was for 
him the dream of ambition to warp his judgment. 
Why may we not suppose that they together thus 
invented this explanation, and told it at the begin- 
ning and through the years to one another and to 
the son, until they almost came to believe it them- 
selves? But is it credible? 

These are questions that must be faced frankly 
by those who believe in the fact. Let us face this 
supposition. The supposition involves these as- 
sumptions: that Mary was consciously false; that 
she cunningly imposed upon Joseph, so that he 
dreamed his dream and acted upon it; and that she 
lived this lie through the years, and taught it to her 
son. It also involves the supposition that Jesus 
either never pierced through all this deception to 
the reality or that he lent himself to the deception 
at, least by his silence. 

Or we may amend the conjecture by supposing 
that Joseph invented the explanation, and that the 
frightened Mary accepted it and played her role 
of falsehood at his instigation. But either suppo- 
sition makes the story an invention by the guilty 
parties, in order to deceive; and that upon this lie 
was built up the claim of Messiahship for Jesus. 

In the way of accepting such a supposition as 
explanation of the origin of the story of the Virgin 
Birth stands the character of Joseph and Mary as 
manifestly simple and sincere, as devout, as too 
devout to commit so great a sacrilege and blas- 


46 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


phemy as fathering the child upon God and into 
the honor of the Messiahship; and in the way 
stands Jesus himself, too reverent of God and too 
utterly truthful to rest his claim on a lie. This 
supposition makes the Founder of Christianity a 
bastard, and founds his religion in a falsehood. 

If this supposition is rejected, then we may sup- 
pose that Joseph and Mary never told or dreamed 
this story at all, and that it was invented, probably 


after Jesus’ death, even long after, as an explana- 


tion of his exceptional greatness, and even of his 
supposed deity. That supposition we shall have 
to examine later; but for the present, if we suppose 
‘the accounts to have come originally from Mary 
and Joseph, we find them confirmed by their sim- 
plicity, by the absence of factitious support, and by 
their consistency. 

The simplicity of the accounts is noteworthy. 
The stories run along without effort or strain, with- 
out any striving for effect, a simple narrative of 
believed facts, without misgiving or exaggeration. 

Equally remarkable is the absence of fictitious 
proofs. If the story was invented, why is it not 


supported by additional proofs? It would have © 


been easy to represent Mary as being always in 
such surroundings and such watchful care as to 
exclude any secret liaison; no effort is made in this 
direction. It would have been easy to suppose a 
more convincing revelation to Joseph than a 
dream; and we must suppose that the revelation is 
represented as coming in a dream, because Joseph 
in all simplicity believed thus it did come. It 


would have been easy to have supposed a birth 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 47 


without the ordinary period of pregnancy. It would 
have been easy to invent accompanying miracles 
and wonders and demonstrations. Instead we have 
the narrative stripped clean of all such inventions. 
The very weakness of the evidence, if it appears 
weak on first consideration, is its strength, because 
it proves its sincerity. 

But the story has remarkable confirmations, not 
given to convince readers of the truth of the story, 
but given at the time to convince Mary and Joseph 
that they were not themselves deceived. If Mary 
had a visitation from the angel Gabriel, so, she 
would learn, that Zacharias had had a visitation 
from the same angel. If the angel named her son, 
the same angel she would learn had named the son 
of Elisabeth. If the angel named her son Jesus, 
the same name was given him by the revelation to 
Joseph. Mary’s own conviction that she was with 
child by the Holy Spirit was confirmed by the 
declaration of Elisabeth. Mary’s right acceptance 
of the annunciation was justified by the sign given 
Zacharias in censure of his doubt. Here were four 
independent revelations given to four persons: 
Zacharias and Elisabeth and Mary and Joseph. If 
any one of these revelations makes a blunder, it 
will be discredited, and if any one of these revela- 
tions is discredited, they will all be discredited; 
but they all make good in every point. If any one 
of these revelations is established, it carries with it 
the other three. 


IV. THE GENEALOGIES 
Matthew and Luke give genealogies, Mat. 
1: 1-17 and Lk. 3: 23-38. These genealogies are 


A8 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


thought by some to throw light on our question; let 
us therefore give them a careful examination. 

Mat. entitles his ‘‘ The book of the generation of 
Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abra- 
ham.” For “ book of the generation ” the Revised 
Version in the margin has ‘ genealogy,” which is 
doubtless the right sense. Beginning “‘ Abraham 
begat Isaac,” this genealogy goes on repeating the 
formula down to ‘“ Jacob begat Joseph.” ‘Then, 
instead of saying “‘ Joseph begat Jesus,” it adds to 
Joseph ‘‘ the husband of Mary, of whom was born 
Jesus, who is called Christ.” This accords per- 
fectly with the story of the Virgin Birth. 

The remarkable thing is that Mat. neither here 
nor elsewhere tells whether Mary was a descend- 
ant of David or not, but does indicate (in 1: 20) 
that Joseph was descended from David, a fact 
which he had just set forth. The reasonable ex- 
planation of this silence as to Mary’s ancestry is, 
either that this was not in dispute when Matthew 
wrote, or that he did not have his attention fixed 
on it. For some reason, he did deem it impor- 
tant to show that Jesus’ legal father was legally 
descended from Abraham through David. And we 
must remember that according to Mat. Jesus was 
born of a married woman, and was in the eyes of 
the law the son of Joseph, and therefore Joseph’s 
heir. So much for Mat. 

Lk. on the other hand, begins his genealogy thus: 
‘And Jesus, when he began to teach, was about 
thirty years of age, being the son (as was sup- 
posed) of Joseph, the son of Heli”; and goes on 


i 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 49 


back to “‘ the son of Adam, the son of God.” Here 
is a puzzle. We notice that the word som occurs in 
the original only in the phrase “being the son ”’; 
and we interpret “the son of Heli” not to assert 
that Joseph was the son of Heli, but that Jesus was 
the son of Heli, and “‘ the son of God ”’ not to assert 
that Adam was the son of God but that Jesus was 
the son of God. The Greek can certainly bear this 
interpretation; and to say that Adam was the son 
of God would certainly be surprising. If Lk. had 
meant to indicate that each name was the son of 
the next succeeding name he could have unmis- 
takably done this in some other way or by insert- 
ing the word for son where the italics in our version 
show that the Greek did not insert the word son. 
Moreover, there were no marks of parenthesis 
used in the Greek; and instead of printing the 
translation ‘‘ being the son (as was supposed) of 
Joseph, the son of Heli” we might as well print it 
“being the son (as was supposed of Joseph) of 
Heli, of Matthat,” etc. The article “the” before 
each name has no significance for us in English; 
the form of it in the Greek here shows what “ of” 
shows in English. From this rendering we get the 
statement that Jesus, though he was supposed to be, 
or was reckoned, the son of Joseph, was really the 
son of Heli. On the supposition that Heli was the 
father of Mary, all difficulty disappears. It is true 
that in the list of names back to David (Heli, Mat- 
that, Levi, Melchi, Jannai, Joseph, Mattathias, 
Amos, Nahum, Esli, Naggai, Maath, Mattathias, 
Semein, Josech, Joda, Joanan, Rhesa, Zerubbabel, 


50 : THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


Shealtiel, Neri, Melchi, Addi, Cosam, Elmadam, 
Er, Jesus, Eliezer, Jorim, Matthat, Levi, Symeon,| 
Judas, Joseph, Jonam, Eliakim, Nelea, Menna, 
Mattatha, Nathan) are forty names, while in Mat. 
covering the same period are only twenty-five 
names (Jacob, Matthan, Eleazar, Bliud, Achim, 
Sadoc, Azor, Eliakim, Abiud, Zerubbabel, Sheal- 
tiel, Jeconiah, Josiah, Amon, Manasseh, Hezekiah, 
Ahaz, Jotham, Uzziah, Joram, Jehoshaphat, Asa, 
Abijah Rehoboam, Solomon). But some names 
are omitted in Mat. in other parts of his table, and 
some may be omitted in the period after the Re- 
turn; and forty generations in say one thousand 
years is not incredible, especially when we take 
into consideration that early marriage was the cus- 
tom, and that the succession would be counted from 
the oldest son as a rule. And we can infer nothing 
against the correctness of Luke’s table from the 
fact that some of the names in his list are the same 
as some of the names in the list of Matthew; for 
the same name is given to two persons in three 
instances (Levi, Joseph, Matthat) in Luke’s list. 
This is one difference between the two lines; that 
the list of Mat. does not repeat a name, and the 
list of Lk. does repeat a name. 

All supposed discrepancies vanish, as soon as we 
recognize that Lk. is tracing the ancestry of Jesus 
through Mary and her father Heli, and Mat. is 
tracing the ancestry of Jesus’ legal father Joseph. 

Another possible rendering of Lk. 3: 23 is “ And 
Jesus, when he began, was about thirty years of 
age, being (as Joseph was considered to be) the 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 51 


son of Heli.” If we accept this rendering, we must 
suppose that Joseph was considered in some legal 
sense the son of his wife’s father. 

Even if there were discrepancies between the 
two genealogies that we could not solve, that would 
not discredit the testimony of Mary and Joseph. 
According to her account she was a descendant of 
David, for her son was to be the son of David. 
According to his account he was himself a descend- 
ant of David. This is the only point in their testi- 
monies that the genealogies could contradict; and 
these they confirm. 

Much has been made of a reading found in the 
text of the Old Syriac Gospels or Evangeleion da- 
Mepharrashe, in a palimpsest found by Miss Agnes 
Smith Lewis in Feb., 1892. In this MS. Mat. 1: 16 
reads as follows: ‘‘ Joseph, to whom was be- 
trothed Mary the Virgin, begat Jesus, who is called 
the Christ.” It seems evident that in this MS. 
“begat ” is used here in the conventional sense of 
‘became the legal father of.’ For in this MS., in 
verses 18-25, is the same clear account of the Vir- 
gin Birth as we read in other innumerable MSS. 
This is not so strange; for according to Jer. 22: 30 
Jeconiah really had no son, and we have therefore 
to understand that he whom he “ begat ” accord- 
ing to Mat. 1: 12 was simply his legal son. Simi- 
larly must be understood 1 Chr. 3:17. This table 
establishes only what it was intended to establish, 
that Jesus was legally the son and heir of Abraham 
through David. 


The real ancestry of Jesus we must learn from 


52 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


the genealogy in Lk., which we must suppose gives , 
the real line of descent from David down to Heli 
the father of Mary. 

These genealogies affirm or imply the Virgin 
Birth. 
V. THE BELIEF OF JESUS 

If the testimony of Mary to the Virgin Birth is 
true, we may assume that she did not hide his 
origin from her son. There is no evidence that she 
published it indiscriminately. Her associates in 
Nazareth may not have known of it. Her marriage 
with Joseph probably took place soon after her 
return from her visit to Elisabeth, too early for her 
condition to become known unmistakably to them. 
They would not know, at the time of her departure, 
just the age of her pregnancy; and they would not 
become acquainted with the exact date of the birth 
in Bethlehem. And the flight into Egypt created 
such an interval of time from their departure from 
Nazareth till their return to it that probably no 
curious inquiry would disturb the peace of Joseph 
and Mary. Elisabeth would not publish the fact, 
probably; and she was probably dead, and Zacha- 
-Yias, not long afterward. Thus the secret would 
be known only to Mary and Joseph and Jesus. 
They would probably not communicate it to the 
other children of the family. These three, then, 
would probably be the only ones that knew Mary’s 
story of the Virgin Birth. But surely Jesus would 
know; his mother would have told him. 

But would he have proclaimed it unmistakably 
in his teaching? It would hardly have been like 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY = 53 


him to do so. He might later in his ministry have 
spoken of it to his most intimate disciples, but 
hardly then for immediate publication. For what 
good purpose would it then serve? Hence his 
silence on the subject, if we find nothing from him 
on the subject in the reports that the Gospels give 
of his teaching, would argue nothing against the 
story. 

But there are two occasions in which he used 
language which indicates that he knew about it and 
accepted it. When he was twelve years of age 
Joseph and Mary took him up to Jerusalem to the 
passover festival. And here is what we read in Lk. 
2: 43-49; 


And when they had fulfilled the days, as they were 
returning, the boy Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; 
and his parents knew it not; but supposing him to be 
in the company, they went a day’s journey; and they 
sought for him among their kinsfolk and acquaint- 
ances: and when they found him not, they returned 
to Jerusalem, seeking for him. And it came to pass, 
after three days they found him in the temple, sitting 
in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them and 
asking them questions: and all that heard him were 
amazed at his understanding and his answers. And 
when they saw him, they were astonished; and his 
mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt 
with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee, 
sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye 
sought me? Knew ye not that I must be in my 
father’s house? 


That Joseph and Mary are spoken of as his 
parents, and Joseph as his father, is in harmony 
with conventional probability. Even among us, 
when there is a child of one of the parties to a mar- 


54 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


riage and not of the other, it is usually taught to 
address both as its parents, and both are generally — 
spoken of as its parents, especially if the child 
was young at the time of the marriage. 

But why should he call the temple ‘‘ my Father’s 
house ” in such a connection as denies that Joseph 
was his father and affirms that God was his father? 
If the boy knew what Mary would or could have 
told him, that he was begotten of the Holy Spirit, 
and that God was his father and not a man, his 
speech is precisely what we might expect. But if 
he knew nothing of all this, how could he make 
the temple his father’s house in a sense in which it 
was not every boy’s father’s house? It is at least 
impossible to deny that Jesus knew and believed his 
Virgin Birth. 

Then when we read in Lk. 7: 28 how Jesus said 
concerning John the Baptist, ““ Among them that 
are born of women there is none greater than John: 
yet he that is lesser”? (or younger) “in the king- 
dom of God is greater than he”; (the saying ‘is 
reported also in Mat. 11:11), we cannot but be 
struck by the unusual phrase “ born of women.” 
Why did he not say “‘ begotten of men,” or use the 
common phrase “men” or “sons of men”? If 
he believed in his Virgin Birth, and wished to in- 
clude himself in his general statement, so as to 
make a comparison between himself and John the 
Baptist, he could not use such a phrase as “ be- 
gotten of men,” for that would have excluded him- 
self; or “sons of men” or “ men,” for that would 
have been liable to be so understood. But by say- 
ing “born of women,” a phrase found nowhere 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 55 


else, he avoids the denial of a truth, while, accord- 
ing to his method of teaching, not thrusting for- 
ward a truth that would obscure what he was then 
meaning to teach. The phrase “ born of woman,” 
of which “ born of women ” is the plur., is used by 
Job in Jb. 14: 1 (of the child born in contrast with 
the unborn foetus, it seems), and (by way of refer- 
ence to Job’s use of it) by two of his friends in Jb. 
15: 14 and 25: 4. 

And this passage (Mk. 3: 35) must be consid- 
ered: “ For whosoever shall do the will of God, the 
same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” So 
Mat. 12:50. If Jesus had omitted “sister,’’ we 
should have supposed that he included “ mother” 
and “brother” in this statement because his 
mother and brothers had come to call for him, and 
that he omitted “ father” and “ sister” because his 
father and his sisters had not come to call for him; 
but now why does he bring in “sister” and not 
“father”? The most convincing explanation is, 
that he had no father in the sense that he had 
mother and brother and sister, and that he wished 
to include all the kinships that he had in the family. 

In Jno. 5: we find Jesus in a close debate with 
his enemies. He claims God as his Father in a 
sense in which other men could not make the claim 
(verse 17); and they pressed this against him as 
making himself equal with God (18). He then 
proceeds to elaborate and justify his claim; and in 
the course of his argument he says, referring to 
his Father, “‘ Ye have neither heard his voice nor 
seen his form.” This was merely a commonplace, 


56 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


unless it veils a denial that a man having literally 
voice and form was his father. | 

This controversy was renewed in 6:. Jesus has 
been speaking of God as his Father, and of his 
having come down from above. They said, “ Is not. 
this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and 
mother we know? How doth he now say, I am 
come down out of heaven.” He continues his ar- 
gument, and reiterates his claim to have come from 
heaven; but he keeps silent on the assertion made 
by them that Joseph was his father. These pas- 
sages at least show us that Jesus had his attention 
sharply called to his being the son of Joseph. This 
he never admits in the exigencies of controversy, 
but uses language that may be understood as veil- 
ing a denial. 

And Jesus was speaking often about God being 
the father of his disciples and about God being his 
father; but he scrupulously avoids speaking of 
him as “our Father.” Even when calling them 
“brothers ” in Jno. 20: 17, he says, ‘“‘ I ascend unto 
my Father and your Father.” To have said “ our 
Father ” would have been to say what could have 
been understood to admit that there was nothing 
but a difference of degree in his sonship to God and 
their sonship; but he claims a unique sonship. 

We cannot say that Jesus distinctly affirmed his 
Virgin Birth, but we may claim that he implied it. 
Certainly it is a reckless disregard of the evidence 
to deny that he ever alludes to it or indicates his 
belief in it. 

We may go so far as to say that, when, in Jno. 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY = 57 


8:, Jesus declares his enemies are sons of their 
father the devil, he has in mind Gen. 3: 15, where 
the seed of the serpent is set over against the seed 
of the woman; and that he may have thought of 
himself as specially the seed of the woman. But I 
would not build my argument on what may be, but 
only on what certainly is. 


VI. THE ONLY BEGOTTEN 


The term means what it says, only begotten, a 
father’s only begotten child. A father might have 
other children by adoption; but this strictly means 
the only son that the father himself begets. 

If the story of the Virgin Birth is true, Jesus was 
the only begotten son of God among men. There 
is a sense-in which he is held to be the Son of God 
by eternal generation, that he is begotten of God 
from eternity; but this theological conception, 
whether true or false, is not expressed by the term 
only begotten. To call Jesus the only begotten is 
a brief way of saying that he had no human father, 
but that God was his father. 

There is some textual evidence for making Jno. 
1: 13 read “ who was begotten ” instead of “ who 
were born.” If this reading were established, then 
verse 12 would have to be treated as a parenthesis, 
and the “who” would refer to the subject in 
verse 11, that is, to “the Word,” and verse 13 
would be an explicit declaration that Jesus was not 
born in the ordinary way of human generation. 
But I do not press this doubtful reading into ser- 
vice. 

The term is used in Jno. 1: 14, “ And the Word 


58 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld 
his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the ~ 
Father), full of grace and truth.” It is to be 
noted that when the Gospel is speaking of his pre- 
existing dignity, he is called ‘the Word,” the 
Logos, verse 1. Here it says, ‘“‘ And the Word be- 
came flesh”; and only when he has become flesh 
is he called ‘the only begotten.” This only be- 
gotten was “ full of grace and truth” as man, as 
visible and knowable man, as the only begotten. 
After calling him “ Jesus Christ” (17) the 
Evangelist proceeds (18), ‘‘ No man hath seen God 
at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the 
bosom of the Father, he hath declared kim.” This 
affirmation is made concerning him who was Jesus 
Christ, who is the Word become man. God no one 
has ever seen; the only begotten Son hath declared 
him or made him visible. The only begotten Son 
is not mere “ God,” but God in flesh. By saying 
that he is in the bosom of the Father he does not 
say that as the only begotten he was in the bosom 
of the Father before he became flesh. Cf. ‘the 
Son of man, who is in heaven ”’ in 3: 14. | 
It is a question whether Jno. 3: 16-21 is from 
Jesus himself or from the Evangelist; but it is not 
necessary to settle this question for our inquiry. 
Let us read 16-18, ‘“‘ For God so loved the world, 
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth on him should not perish, but have eter- 
nal life. For God sent not the Son into the world 
to judge the world; but that the world should be 
saved through him. He that believeth on him is. 
not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 59 


already, because he hath not believed on the name 
of the only begotten Son of God.” It is possible to 
suppose that the only begotten is here thought of 
as existing as the only begotten before he came 
into the world; but against this supposition are two 
considerations. The immediately preceding sen- 
tence (14-15) presents the Son of man as lifted up 
(crucified); and the sentence intervening between 
the statements about “the only begotten Son” 
does not use the term “ the only begotten Son,’’ but 
simply “the Son.” Even if the “only begotten 
Son” were used to designate him as in his pre- 
existent state, that would not be decisive that the 
term connotes his dignity as in the pre-existent 
state; for when a name is once attached to a per- 
son as a designation of him it may be loosely used 
to designate him beyond its connotation. If, for 
instance, a man is spoken of as Doctor in telling 
some act that he did, that would not prove that he 
was already Doctor at the time of that act. 

Hence when we read in Jno. 4: 9 that “ Herein 
was the love of God manifested in us, that God 
hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that 
we might live through him,” we cannot infer that 
the person thus designated was the only begotten 
Son before he was sent. 

John is the only New Testament writer who ap- 
plies this term to Jesus Christ. He was writing to 
people who knew the story that he was begotten of 
God in the Virgin Mary. He first applies the epi- 
thet in a connection in which he refers to him as 
becoming flesh. He does not elsewhere use it so as 


60 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


to make it mean that he was in this sense begotten — 


before he was begotten in the virgin Mary. The 
term must have connoted to John’s first readers 
that Jesus was divinely begotten in the virgin. It 


must have implied the Virgin Birth. It is sheer 


dogmatism to say that John, the author of the Gos- 
pel, knew nothing of the Virgin Birth. On the con- 
trary, he endorsed it. 


VII. THE SON OF GOD 

Just as ‘‘ the only begotten ” originates out of the 
fact of His having been begotten by God and not 
by a human father, so the term “ the Son of God.” 
For the angel said to Mary (Lk. 1: 35), “ The 
Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of 
the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore 
also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called 
the Son of God.” Here is the definite statement 
that the term originated from the fact that not a 
man but God was his father, originated in the Vir- 
gin Birth. If therefore a New Testament writer 
uses this term, he thereby endorses the story of the 
Virgin Birth. 

We will examine its usage in the Synoptic Gos- 
pels. When Mat. 2: 15 represents the infant son 
of Mary by the Holy Spirit as God’s Son, it is 
speaking in accordance with the record set forth in 
Mat. 1: 18-25. If we read in Mk. 1:1 “ The be- 
ginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God,” and find nowhere in Mk. an account of the 
Virgin Birth, we infer his acquaintance with the 
fact of the Virgin Birth, on account of which Jesus 


’ 


\ 


‘NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 61 


was to be called the Son of God. When we hear 
God at his baptism calling him “‘ my beloved Son ” 
(Mat. 3:17; Mk. 1:11; Lk. 3:22), we must un- 
derstand the term in Lk. and Mat. in the light of 
its origin in the Virgin Birth story; and there ap- 
pears no reason to understand it differently in Mk. 

A like remark may be made about God’s calling 
him ‘‘ my son ” at the transfiguration (Mat. 17: 5; 
MikoO2i7s Lk. 9:35); 

When Jesus speaks of himself as “the Son” in 
Lk. 10: 22 and Mat. 11: 27, we cannot forget his 
recognition of his Virgin Birth in Lk. 2: 49. 

Even so Mk. 13:32; 14: 62 and Mat. 26: 64; 
tb, a atay OF 

Nor can we deny this connotation to ‘the Son” 
in Mat. 28: 19, where Jesus gives the great com- 
mission. 

If the story of the Virgin Birth as given in Lk. 
and Mat. is true, or was believed by Luke and Mat- 
thew to be true, then they must have understood 
“the Son ” and “ the Son of God ” in the passages 
cited from their Gospels in the light of that ac- 
count; and if Mark knew this story and believed 
it, he must have had the like understanding. On 
the other hand, the very term itself implies some 
begetting by God peculiar to Jesus, and the Virgin 
Birth fits such implication. 

It is therefore the sheerest dogmatism to assert 
that Mark knew nothing of the Virgin Birth and 
did not endorse it. To sustain this assertion, it 
would be necessary to show positively some other 


62 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


origin of the term that would disprove the origin 
given in Lk. 1: 35. 


VIII. PAUL AND THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


If Paul had made no reference to the Virgin 
Birth in any of his Epistles, his silence would not 
be evidence against it, unless in some passage he 
had occasion to deal with the matter; but even then 
we should expect him not to avoid the question. 
Yet his complete silence on the matter would be the 
absence of evidence where we might hope to find it. 

When he says that Jesus Christ was of the “ seed 
of David,” (Rom. 1:3 and 2 Tim. 2: 8) we can 
make no inference for or against the Virgin Birth. 
But this passage from Gal. 4:4 is significant: 
‘““When the fulness of the time came, God sent 
forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the 
law.” Why should he write “ born of a woman” 
instead of “ begotten of aman”? Or why not say 
simply “ born under the law”? Would not Paul’s 
reasoning have been just as cogent with the “ born 
of a woman” omitted? Yes, unless he felt that he 
must say that he was a man in order to say that 
he was under law, and yet could not say that he 
became a human being in the ordinary way because 
that was not so. Compare the words of Jesus, 
“born of woman” (Mat. 11:11 and Lk. 7: 8). 
Paul’s phrase is not just that used in Jb. 14:1; 
15: 14; 25: 14, “ born of a woman,” but more ex- 
actly “made of a woman.” We must remember 
that these expressions ‘born of woman” and 
“born of a woman,” although they sound so 
natural to us, are found only in these places in the 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 63 


Bible, and were evidently resorted to for some 
special reason. 

It is incredible that Paul knew nothing of the 
Virgin Birth, even if we suppose it a late invention. 
If an invention, it must have begun to grow early 
enough to get into Mat. and Lk. And if Paul had 
so much as heard of it, he could not have written 
Gal. 4: 4 without by implication endorsing it or at 
least avoiding to contradict it. 

Thus goes into the discard the claim that Paul 
knew nothing of the Virgin Birth or altogether 
ignored it. It was a matter of course with him, so 
completely a part of his system of thought and 
belief as an apostle of Christianity that he only 
incidentally alludes to it. Like most of the facts 
and teachings of the Gospels, which he does not 
find occasion often to reaffirm explicitly, but which 
his whole system of belief assumes; so is the Virgin 
Birth. As well say that a man who in a treatise on 
optics never mentions explicitly the light of the 
sun, but only the light, had never seen the sun and 
had never so much as heard of its existence, as to 
say that Paul knew nothing of the Virgin Birth. 


IX. THE VIRGIN BIRTH IN THE BOOK OF 
REVELATION 

The absence of allusion to the Virgin Birth in 
such a work as Revelation would hardly be nega- 
tive evidence against it; yet we do find in it what 
may be an allusion to it, a piece of imagery that 
assumes it. 

In the 12th chapter is recorded a vision, “a great 
sign in heaven: a woman arrayed with the sun, and 


64 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


the moon under her feet, and upon her head a. 
crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; 
and she crieth out, travailing in birth, and in pain 
to be delivered.”” This does not call her a virgin, 
nor even point out that her child was to be a son; 
but her description rather suggests that she is the 
personification of God’s true Israel. Especially the 
twelve stars of the crown of her head, suggests 
something like this. ‘‘ And there was seen another 
sign in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon, hav- 
ing seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads 
seven diadems. And his tail draweth the third part 
of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the 
earth: and the dragon standeth before the woman 
that is about to be delivered, that when she is 
delivered he may devour her child.” ‘The descrip- 
tion of the dragon may suggest that he is the per- 
sonification of Rome; but his being called the 
dragon, and his hostile intentions toward the 
woman and her child, remind us of Gen. 3: 15, “I 
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and 
between thy seed and her seed: he shall crush thy 
head, and thou shalt crush his heel.” ‘ And she was 
delivered of a son, a man child, who is to rule all 
the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was 
caught up unto God, and unto his throne. And 
the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath 
a place prepared of God, that there they may nour- 
ish her a thousand two hundred and threescore 
days.” The vision is symbolic; but the man child 
is evidently the Messiah, the Christ; and the 
woman would seem to be the true Israel, or the 
church under persecution. 


4 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 65 


So much for vs. 1-6. Now in vs. 7-12 there is 
war in heaven, and the dragon is cast down, and 
there is great rejoicing. Significant is the descrip- 
tion of the great dragon as “the old serpent, he 
that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of 
the whole world.” This in a way identifies the 
dragon with the serpent of Gen. 3: 15. 

Vs. 13-17 add little or nothing for our inquiry, 
except that the serpent ‘‘ made war with the rest of 
her seed.” 

The only thing in this vision as here recorded is 
the fact that the Child, who is the Christ, is the 
child of a woman, and nothing is said about his 
father. This fact does at least keep any from say- 
ing that the book knows nothing of the Virgin 
Birth. And it also completes the general emphasis 
of Scripture that the Christ is born of a woman. 


X. SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE 

In Gen. we found in the idea of the woman’s 
seed becoming the Savior from the serpent some 
sort of emphasis upon the woman as over against 
the man in the origin of the Promised Seed. In the 
Old Testament in general we found an expectation 
of the Christ, or Messiah, yet to be, who was to 
be born in some extraordinary way, and to be in 
some special sense the Son of God. And in Isa. 
7:14 we found that there is foreshadowed the 
birth of this Coming One from a Virgin while she 
is a virgin. If this expectation raised by the Old 
Testament is not realized in the New Testament, 
then either the Old Testament or the New is dis- 
credited, or both. 


66 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


Central in the New Testament is the testimony, 
of Mary herself. She believed herself to be the 
mother of Jesus without a human father, God him- 
self taking the place of the father. She was led 
to this belief by the announcement that it should 
be so by a messenger who first introduced himself 
to her as the angel Gabriel and greatly impressed 
her with his dignity, by the fact itself as she expe- 
rienced it, and by the confirming circumstances of 
the revelation to Zacharias, of the revelation to 
Elisabeth, and of the revelation to Joseph. Her 
testimony bears every mark of competency, sincer- 
ity, consistency, ability to know and absence of 
improper motive and of credulity. 

Secondary to the testimony of Mary, but its 
complement, is the testimony of Joseph. That he 
received his revelation in a dream argues that his 
story is not a fiction but a fact; else why have it 
to come in a dream and not in some more objec- 
tive and spectacular way? Note the conditions in 
which he had the dream, the impress of reality of 
the dream itself, and the confirmations of the 
dream in its agreements with the other revelation 
and especially with that to Mary, and in the fulfil- 
ment of it. If aman who believed a divine com- 
munication was possible in a dream, as Joseph of 
course did, underwent his experience, he would be 
convinced of its reality, and ought to be convinced. 
Here is an honest witness, competent, not too cred- 
ulous, and yet not too incredulous, capable of re- 
ceiving such a revelation. 

The authors of the Gospels of Mat. and Lk. 
themselves believed this story and make it each an 


NEW TESTAMENT TESTIMONY 67 


integral part of his narrative. Mat. brings for- 
ward a genealogy to show that Joseph was the 
legal son and heir of David; and that he therefore 
transmitted his heritage to his legitimate son Jesus, 
his legitimate though not his real or natural son. 
Lk. brings forward a genealogy to show that Jesus 
was the real blood descendant of David. We are 
not able now to verify these genealogies in all their 
parts; but we have nothing to discredit them. 

Jesus himself knew about his birth and believed 
the story of Mary and Joseph. This he showed in 
explicitly recognizing God as his father as over 
against Joseph when he was twelve years of age, 
and by using the singular phrase ‘‘ among those 
born of women” so as to include himself, to say 
nothing of other implications in the Gospel of Jno. 

The Evangelist John uses the epithet “ only be- 
gotten ” and “ only begotten Son of God ”’; he used 
this epithet at a time when the story of the Virgin 
Birth was well known; and he used this epithet 
when it could have no other meaning than the en- 
dorsement of that story. According to that story 
Jesus was strictly God’s only begotten Son. 

The term ‘“‘ the Son of God ” as applied to Jesus 
Christ originated in his Virgin Birth according to 
Lk. 1: 35; and Mk. and the New Testament writ- 
ers generally use this term, thus endorsing the 
story of the Virgin Birth. Paul uses the peculiar 
expression “ born of a woman” when referring to 
the birth of Jesus, instead of ‘‘ begotten of a man” 
or “son of man,” choosing such an expression as 
would not deny the Virgin Birth. And Rev. uses 


68 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


such imagery in one of its visions as forbids our. 
saying that the author did not know or believe in 
the Virgin Birth. 

The New Testament writers generally believed 
the Virgin Birth. It is woven into the whole New 
Testament history. 


IV 
DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 


I, THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF 
SCRIPTURE 


HERE are two views of Scripture, the his- 

toristic and the anti-historistic view. The 

historistic view holds that the Scriptures 

are good history, that they correctly present the 

facts with which they deal, that their statements 
of fact are true and trustworthy. 

A historicist may believe that Scripture comes 
to have this characteristic by being the product of 
an inspiration that dictates the very words, so that 
the writers are but the amanuenses of the Holy 
Spirit, setting down the dictated words; another 
historicist may believe that Scripture comes to have 
this characteristic of historic fidelity by an inspi- 
ration which sets the writer upon ascertaining and 
verifying his statements of objective facts, and 
which subjects the writer to a divine influence in 
discerning the truth in matters not capable of ob- 
jective verification. That is, two men holding to 
the same resultant historicity of Scripture may at- 
tribute that historicity to what each calls inspira- 
tion, but may differ widely in their philosophy of 
how this inspiration works, or even as to what pre- 
_ cisely the inspiration is; but they agree in accept- 
ing the historicity of Scripture. 

And they extend the same quality to all the 

69 


70 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


Scripture. Inasmuch as a poem or a prophecy or . 
a proverb, appears in this history of revelation as 
a part of this revelation, such piece of sacred liter- 
ature is accepted by the historicist as conveying a 
revelation from. God. 

The historicist of course believes that the mean- 
ing of Scripture is ascertainable; he believes in its 
intelligibility as well as its historicity. He does 
not determine beforehand how a given Scripture 
is to be interpreted, that is, he would interpret a 
plain narrative, an argument, an oration, a poem, 
a parable, or a piece of fiction, each as such, each 
according to its nature; but he accepts it as re- 
vealing truth from God, and to be accepted as the 
word of God, when understood in its intended 
sense. 

The historicist does not deny the possibility of 
errors of translation, or the possibility of errors in 
the transmission of the text; and historicists may 
differ among themselves in matters of translation 
and of text, and in other matters of interpretation; 
but he is a historicist who believes in the veracity, 
the correctness, and the truth of Scripture, when 
rightly understood, and in its intelligibility. If one 
raises the speculative question, whether there may 
have been in the autographs, or first copies, such 
an error as “ eight ” for “ eighteen,” or “‘ eighteen ” 
for “ eight,” (cf. 2 Ki. 24: 8, which makes Jehoia- 
chin eighteen years old when he began to reign, 
and 2 Chr. 36: 9, which makes him eight when he 
began to reign), the historicist is disposed to think 
that probably there was no such error in the auto- 
graphs, but he does not have to deny the possibility 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 71 


of such an error arising from a slip of the memory 
or a lapse of attention in making the autograph 
copy. For the important thing for the historicist 
is not mere mechanical inerrancy, but trustworthy 
historicity. His question is, Does the Bible tell 
the truth? does it tell the truth of fact and the 
truth of doctrine? Can we rest in it as bringing 
to us God’s message intended for our enlighten- 
ment? 

Now if a man is a historicist, though he may not 
go as far as some in his doctrine of inspiration, he 
will of course believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus 
Christ; and if a man does not accept the Virgin 
Birth, then he is not a historicist. Here is the 
dividing line. 

The anti-historicist may value the Scripture very 
highly, and may even believe in its inspiration in 
some very high sense; but he does not believe in its 
historicity. He will of course accept parts of it 
as reporting the facts correctly; but the mere testi- 
mony of the Scriptures to a fact does not convince 
him. He expects to find its statements in need of 
correction; he cannot trust the Scripture as such 
to tell the truth. So it is in narrative sometimes 
correct, and sometimes incorrect. In some places 
it reports the facts as they were; in others it mis- 
states the facts more or less; and in others it re- 
ports as facts what never took place at all. And 
so it is in its teachings: it is sometimes altogether 
mistaken; at other times it mixes truth and error; 
and at other times it simply teaches a true view. 
It is not to the anti-historicist the word of God as 
far as it speaks; it is but the apprehensions that 


[2 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


men at the time had of what they supposed was | 
the mind of God, but it is often far wide of the 
mark, and is to be corrected continuously by the 
superior enlightenment of later times, by later 
discoveries in the physical sciences not only, but 
by later discoveries in the sphere of morals and ~ 
religion. Even its doctrine of God needs amend- 
ment in the light of better thought and deeper in- 
sight of after ages and of modern times. Not all 
anti-historicists will repudiate the truth of Scrip- 
ture to the same extent; but every anti-historicist 
will repudiate the truth of Scripture to a large ex- 
tent and to such a degree that what the Scripture 
says is not to him the final word. Scripture is not 
the Word of God. 

Now the question of the Virgin Birth is a divid- 
ing question, which well draws the line of demarka- 
tion between these two views of Scripture. If a 
man holds that the accounts of the Virgin Birth as 
given in Mat. and Lk. are not trustworthy narra- 
tives of fact, and is not willing to rest upon this 
testimony, then he is an anti-historicist. Scripture 
testimony is not to him adequate evidence of fact. 
He may believe that Jesus was the son of Joseph 
and Mary begotten out of wedlock, and this story 
of the Virgin Birth an invention to cover up the 
fact; or he may believe that Jesus was the son of 
Joseph and Mary begotten in wedlock, and this 
story a later invention, for which they are not re- 
sponsible, to explain the superiority of Jesus, or 
his supposed superiority; he may believe that this 
story got into the narratives through the credulity 
of the authors of the Gospels or through their wil- 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 73 


lingness to glorify Jesus apart from the facts; or 
he may believe that this story is an attempt to 
suggest some explanation of the superiority of 
Jesus under the form of a narrative, understood in 
its first appearance as a sort of poetic myth and 
later becoming a piece of simple narrative of fact 
when the fact was not as stated; in any case he 
repudiates the historicity of the narrative, and 
makes the plain testimony of the Gospels false. 

He not only repudiates the truth of these nar- 
ratives, but he repudiates the Old Testament ex- 
pectation which these narratives fulfil or would 
fulfil if they were true, and all the implications of 
the New Testament that seem to him to assume or 
endorse the Virgin Birth, if such there be. He says 
that the New Testament, from which alone we can 
learn the facts about Jesus, about his origin and 
life, about his deeds and teachings, about his death 
and his after condition, is not trustworthy history, 
but is largely myth and mistake. He says that 
the New Testament contains doctrines that are the 
mere opinions of the writers, sometimes their mis- 
taken opinions or fancies, or their false reasoning. 
He says that the reports of what Jesus taught are 
themselves untrustworthy reports, that must be 
sifted and the chaff of error blown off by modern 
insight, even if he imagines that Jesus was himself 
superior to error. But for such an imagination he 
has no trustworthy’ historical evidence. And for 
every other teaching of the New Testament he 
must inspect it, assess it, and accept it in part-or 
reject it in part, according to the better insight to 
which he can attain over Paul and John. 


74 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


I am not saying that a man cannot be a devout » 
believer in Jesus Christ and hold this view. Christ 
may shine to him through the untrustworthy 
records, as he regards them, and he may get hold of 
the genuine Christ; and a historicist may miss the 
real Christ with all his confidence in Scripture. 
Many of the Pharisees with whom Jesus Christ de- 
bated were historicists and failed to find him. The 
office of Scripture is to testify of Christ, in whom, 
and not in the book, is salvation. My object now 
is to show just what these two views are, the one 
judging the Scriptures and selecting the true out 
of the false; and the other finding in the answer of 
Scripture the final answer. 

For to the historicist the predictions of the Old 
Testament come from the One Mind that is reveal- 
ing itself throughout the Scriptures. It is his 
breath that blows in it all. He points in Gen. 3: 15 
towards the fact that was to be; he points in the 
Messianic promise of the Messiah’s sonship to God 
to the fact that was to be. He certified this fact 
to Mary and to Joseph. He acknowledged this fact 
at the baptism of Jesus, calling him his son. He 
revealed this fact to the disciples. He constructs 
a whole system of teaching in the New Testament, 
in which this fact is an integral part. God is him- 
self responsible for this doctrine, the fact of the 
Virgin Birth. 

It is so woven into the whole structure and con- 
tent of the Scripture that the historicity of Scrip- 
ture stands or falls with it. Whether God could 
have given us a Savior without this Virgin Birth, 
or a Bible that knew nothing of it, he has not done 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 75 


so. The historicist believes that Jesus was born 
of a virgin, because the Bible says so: the anti- 
historicist does not believe that Jesus was born of 
a virgin, although the Bible says so. 


II, THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
MIRACULOUS 

Belief in the Virgin Birth is belief in a miracle, 
and therefore makes the mind hospitable to belief 
in the miraculous. Let us see what are the marks 
of a miracle as we learn them from this miracle. 

A miracle is not a violation of the laws of nature 
or a suspension of them. It may be a law of 
nature that under given conditions a virgin will 
have a child, and that these conditions met in the 
case of Mary. There may be millions of events 
falling out according to the laws of nature; and 
there may be only one event falling out according 
to that law. Whether an event takes place is a 
question of evidence; and if an event takes place 
which we thought before would be in contravention 
to a law of nature, we would immediately amend 
our law of nature so as to allow that event. A 
miracle is contrary to the ordinary, but not to the 
necessary. Miracles are not impossible events, 
though they are wonderful events. 

A miracle takes place in nature, takes its place 
in nature, and accords with nature. It is an ex- 
traordinary phenomenon in the midst of ordinary 
phenomena, and becomes a harmonious element in 
the stream of phenomena. At least, such is this 
miracle. A child is conceived in a woman’s womb; 
it passes through the ordinary stages of pyegnancy; 


76 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


it is born in the ordinary way; it is nourished in | 
the ordinary way; it is subject to the ordinary dan- 
gers and receives the ordinary protection; it has 
the ordinary growth. Just one thing in the whole 
process is extraordinary: the original conception. 

A Bible miracle is a wonder, but it is a minimum 
of the wonderful. If a child is to be born a child 
of God and not the child of a man, what could have 
been omitted that was not omitted in this case? 

A miracle is the certification of a revelation. So 
this miracle certified the revelations given to Mary 

and Joseph. 
A miracle is itself a revelation. It is a wonder 
that takes place in such circumstances and con- 
nections that the witnesses of it are by it given ade- 
quate evidence that God is himself then and there 
at work on purpose. 

No miracle ever comes without a reason for it. 
It comes when needed in the course of revelation 
to certify to the revelation. 

Such are Biblical miracles. Creation was a 
miracle, but man was made of the dust. The flood 
was a miracle; but the waters already in existence 
were used with their ordinary drowning properties. 
The group of miracles that center around the 
Mosaic revelation were needed to certify to that 
revelation, and were parsimonious of the wonderful. 
A wind blew all night to divide the Red Sea. In 
the wilderness no water was created. The second 
great group of miracles, the Elijah-Elisha group, 
came in the crisis of prophetic revelation to certify 
to the commission of those prophets. And the 
storm on Mount Carmel was an ordinary storm 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES ay 


from the Mediterranean. And the third great 
group of miracles that center around Jesus Christ 
were needed to certify to his prophetic authority; 
and they were parsimonious of the wonderful. If 
he fed the hungry multitudes, he used some loaves 
and fishes, and their hunger was satisfied in the 
ordinary way, that is, by food. The miraculous 
element in the Bible has a restraint and a dignity 
worthy of God. 

But did these reasonable miracles ever really 
take place? To the mind that admits one of them 
the others may find entrance. 

But if the miracle of the Virgin Birth, foretold 
in the Old Testament and standing at the threshold 
of the New Testament, is rejected, how can the 
other miracles of the Bible be accepted. If this 
miracle is incredible, what makes any other miracle 
credible? 

And if a mind begins Jesus without a miracle, ' 
how will it not end him without a miracle? If con- 
trary to the Gospels Jesus was the son of one 
Joseph in the beginning, how will he not contrary 
to the same Gospels lie lifeless in the tomb of an-, 
other Joseph in the end? 

But if we are convinced of the miraculous con- 
ception of the Child, then we may believe in the 
one miracle of revelation. This miraculous revela- 
tion may arise in the beginning of human history, 
bearing in its forefront the protevangelium; may 
ride the waves of the flood, and deliver the cove- 
nant to Noah; may come out of the dark ages that 
preceded, and deliver the better covenant to Abra- 


us THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


ham; may call the covenant people out of Egypt, | 
and instruct them from Sinai; may settle them in 
Canaan, and fight for them through the centuries 
of confusion; may give birth to a Christ in the per- 
son of Saul, purify the idea in the person of David, 
and develop the idea through the long centuries of 
failure; may swell in the songs of the Psalms; may 
thunder and weep and hope in the creations of the 
prophets; may rise from the dead out of Babylon; 
may sing with the angels over the birth of the real 
and fulfilling Christ in Bethlehem; may speak with 
human lips the words of God through the ministry 
of Jesus; may foreshadow renewal of life in the 
miracles of Christ; may watch Him fall by wicked 
hands to redeem wicked man; may keep vigil over 
His tomb till He breaks forth from it in glorious 
resurrection; may company with him during the 
forty days of his demonstration to his disciples; 
may point to him ascending to his Father; may be- 
come conscious of his presence in the gift of the 
Holy Spirit; and may complete this miracle of 
revelation in the books of the New Testament. 
Then faith may look at the finished whole, and sub- 
mit itself to its infallible guidance, till he come 
again. 


~ III. THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE 


PERSON OF CHRIST 


If one raise the speculative question whether one 
could believe in the deity of Christ without believ- 
ing in his Virgin Birth, it may very well be said 
that we cannot say how the incarnation must be ef- 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 79 


fected, by what method it must come, and there- 
fore we cannot infer the Virgin Birth from the in- 
carnation. But that is not the same as saying that 
we could retain our belief in the incarnation with- 
out belief in any method of it. If there was noth- 
ing extraordinary in his origin, how could we be- 
lieve that there was something so extraordinary in 
his person as the incarnation? ‘To the mind that ' 
denies the Virgin Birth of Jesus, and affirms no 
other method of his incarnation, but believes that 
he was the son of a human father and a human 
mother in the ordinary method, the way is open to 
the belief that there was nothing of the divine in 
him that is not or may not be in any other human 
being. But once let the conviction fix itself in the 
mind that the Virgin Birth of Jesus was veritably 
an actual fact, and then the mind is open to receive 
instruction concerning the union of the divine and 
the human in his paradoxical person. 

The doctrine of Scripture on this subject is 
summed up in the term the Son of God. 

But the mind that denies the Virgin Birth may 
easily reason thus: ‘Other men, especially other 
good men, are called sons of God; and Jesus is 
called the Son of God by way of preeminence, be- 
cause he excels in those divine qualities which the 
term connotes. When the Scriptures say that he is 
the Son of God, or by other expressions represent 
him as Godlike or godly, or as having God dwelling 
in him, or even should they in an exceptional usage 
of terms call him God, we must not make him out 
to be God strictly, or to be divine in a sense dif- 


80 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


ferent from that in which other godly men are, 
divine. He may be, indeed he is, the most godly, 
the most divine, the most God-possessed man that 
so far has ever lived; but even so, he is not divine 
except in the sense in which any man may be or 
become divine. 

“Even if we should find passages or books of 
Scripture that take the view of the orthodox Trini- 
tarian theology, and worship him as God of very 
God, equal with the Father in power and glory, 
consubstantial with the Father but a distinct per- 
son; such Scripture would be what such creed is, 
the expression of the persuasion of the writer, and 
not a revelation of a fact or of a reality of philoso- 
phy. Such a Scripture would only show what im- 
pression the personality of Jesus made on a mind 
devoted to him, and lifted into pardonable ex- 
travagance in its enthusiasm, or led off into 
the inexact language of an imperfect metaphys- 
ics. The fact that a Biblical writer con- 
ceived the person of Jesus in terms of a phi- 
losophy which can now be seen to be a failure to 
grasp the deepest philosophical truth would be no 
sufficient reason why we should follow him in his 
erroneous philosophy. We may indeed use his 
language as a form of expressing the love and ad- 
miration which Jesus calls forth; but we must re- 
strain ourselves as thinkers from letting our minds 
harden such rhapsodies as these would be into a 
fixed dogma.” 

But if a man accept the Virgin Birth, and thus 
has a mind open to the Scripture teaching, he will 
thus proceed, or may thus proceed, in his medita- 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 81 


tion on this theme. When Jesus is begotten of God 
in the womb of the virgin, having no human father, 
then this holy thing born of her is called the Son of 
God, because so he is. He is the Son of God, and 
not the son of any man. He is therefore essentially 
different from any other born of woman. Others. 
can be called sons of God, but no other is ever | 
called the son of God; this is the only begotten | 
Son of God. Here is a being in a class by himself, © 
man as he is born of a woman, and God as he is 
begotten of God. This is the Word made flesh; this 
is God manifest in the flesh. This is not a man in 
whom God dwells and from whom God shines out, 
manifesting the uplifting power of God as a speci- 
men of what a man may be by accepting the in- | 
dwelling God; but this is a being unique in a dual | 
nature, being God and man in two distinct natures 
but in one Person. 

Then such a mind may observe this unique per- 
sonality through his growth and activity in the 
limits and sphere of a manifest human life and 
death. He will see in him all human faculties and 
capacities, all human experiences save one; for he 
will see in him human virtue without human sin. 
In his freedom from the taint of sin he stands alone 
in the race, the one sinless man, the one man who 
is just what he ought to be, the Righteous. 

And he will see in this Jesus a certain power not 
human. I do not mean the mere power of miracles 
and prophecy, with which other men have been 
endued in measure; but an indefinable dignity, an 
ineffable something for which we have no word un- 


82 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


less we call it God or some name connoting the’ 
divine in the distinctive sense. He will hear him 
speak of himself with all calmness, without excite- 
ment, without conceit, without a trace of egotism, 
as the Lord and Judge of all men, as the Savior of 
man, as everywhere present and everywhen pres- 
ent to those who trust him, the Answerer of prayer 
and the Divine Companion, and as the Center and 
Reconciler in whom his Father and his people meet 
and know and love and live. And in saying all 
these things of himself he will not be using terms 
out of place or strained, but terms that fit, the 
natural expression of conscious realities. 

Listening to him and observing him, learning to 
trust him and to love him, we shall get to obeying 
him as a matter of course. He will grow upon us 
until we cannot be satisfied with that connotation 
of the Son of God with which we started; but we 
shall hear with adoration of his existence with the 
Father before he was born, of his existence before 
Abraham was, of his being with God and being God 
originally, eternally. We shall put into the term 
some connotation of eternal qualities, and shall 
think of him as the Son of God before he became 
the son of the Virgin, of some inexpressible reality 
before time in the eternal relation of Father and 
Son. We shall adore without being able to under- 
stand; we shall understand what we cannot 
express. 

We shall go on with the New Testament writers 
in their highest words and still higher thoughts, 
honoring him as we honor God while remembering 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 83 


that he is Son, and not in calling him Son lowering 
him below God. No formulas can adequately ex- 
press our adoration; but with all the fierceness of 
worshipers we shall resent all efforts to belittle him 
into the finest of the human race. 


IV. THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN 


The doctrine of sin has to do with its pollution, 
its guilt, and its punishment. 

If the Virgin Birth is not true, and Jesus was 
simply a human being having a human father and 
mother, then I am reduced to this alternative: 
either he had the same innate bias)to sin, the same 
pollution or taint, as other men; or all other men 
have the same capacity for moral uprightness as 
he. The two alternatives are really one. 

If I assume the first alternative, and see in him 
one innately what I am, I become ashamed of his | 
nature. I may admire his victory over his natural 
bias, and his wonderful moral ascent in spite of his 
taint; but there lurks in my mind a certain pity of 
him, a certain shame of his nature, a certain wish 
that I had a better Christ. I have seen, or have 
dreamed that I saw, the vision of the impeccable 
Christ; and it hurts me that I must now debase my 
ideal. I cannot work myself up to perfect trust in 
a tainted Savior. Give me back my sinless Christ! 

If I take the second alternative, and believe that 
all other men have in them the same capacity for 
moral goodness as he; then I easily slide into the 
persuasion: “ My sin is not the terrible thing that 
I thought it to be. It has not killed in me the 
potentiality for righteousness; for here is a man, 


84 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


essentially like myself, with my very nature, who 
has climbed up to the acme of healthy moral life; 
and I am encouraged to climb up after him. 

“ There has been no fall of the race into universal 
inability, from which none can raise himself, for 
here is one who has raised himself, and the rest of 
us can do the same. The whole race of individuals 
begins, each immature, each with a germ that may 
grow into a species like Jesus or into a species like 
Judas; but it is a process of development from 
within. Every man is born a potential saint; and 
it is for each man to realize his potentiality. And 
Jesus shows us how. 

“ Guilt is a blunder of our imperfect insight into 
human psychology; there is strictly no such thing 
as desert of punishment. The sense of guilt is an 
uncomfortable feeling that arises when we see our 
actual inferior to our ideal, an uncomfortable feel- 
ing that should but spur us on to persevering en- 
deavor toward our ideal, but which, in the crude- 
ness of our thought, and in the terror inspired by 
false teaching, we too often misunderstand as a con- 
demning voice of despair. 

‘Human nature is really not so bad, and not so 
helpless and hopeless. We are on the way to per- 
fection. Each of us has in him a germ of moral 
beauty and purity and strength. Let us have faith 
in human nature; let us believe in ourselves. Look 
at Jesus, and cheer up, ye brothers of the Christ; 
for ye can play the game as well as he. 

“Human nature is not dead, nor fatally diseased. 
Human nature does not deserve to perish. There 
is nowhere in the universe a curse or guilt, nowhere 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 85 


a relentless justice that demands our death, no- 
where an almighty executioner with drawn sword. 

“ Hell is a myth; guilt is a delusion. There are 
ideals; and the highest ideal, and the possibility of 
attaining it, is our heritage. Every man is born a 
potential Christ.” 

But if the Virgin Birth is a fact, then the moral 
superiority of Jesus cannot be pleaded in advocacy 
of the essential goodness of human nature, and 
every child of a human father is left by nature 
tainted with sin without the power of recovery. 
Then the perfection of Christ is the condemnation 
of all other men. ‘Then sin, perversity, baseness, 
depravity, wickedness, iniquity, guilt, punishment, 
judgment, death, hell, and such terms are designa- 
tions of terrible realities. They do not need to be 
explained away or minimized. 7 

An infection of guilt has poisoned the human 
race, and every child is born with a latent leprosy. 

Guilt is branded on the human conscience, sen- 
tencing the individual to death. He deserves his 
doom; and there is a Will of Righteousness omnip- 
otent in the universe to inflict his doom. 

Here are the opposing doctrines of sin and guilt, 
of human helplessness on the way to just judgment 
and through the judgment to inescapable death, on 
the one hand; and on the other hand, of imma- 
turity to be outgrown, of ignorance to be enlight- 
ened, of progress into moral perfection. The Son 
of God who is not the son of a human father is the 
flame of light revealing the abyss of sin; the divine 
Jesus born of Joseph and Mary is the convincing 


86 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


specimen that bids all to rise out of the temporary | 
actual into the eternal ideal of human nature. 


V. THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF 
ATONEMENT 


The doctrine of Scripture concerning atonement 
comprises the following points: sin has guilt, desert 
of punishment, or sin puts God under obligation to 
punish it; and, as he is righteous, he will fulfil his 
obligation. And here I am not using punishment 
in the sense of chastisement that aims at reforma- 
tion, but punitive infliction that aims at destruc- 
tion. Death is the penalty of sin. Also sin Is pol- 
lution, uncleanness, defilement. 

Hence, to save from sin, expiation and purifica- 
tion are both necessary. Purification from the pol- 
lution of sin is effected symbolically by water, 
washing away the pollution of the flesh; so that the 
Spirit of God purifies the spiritual nature from sin’s 
defilement by changing the mind. When the will 
to sin is gone, the sin is gone; for sin is wrong will. 
Sin is in the motive, in the volitional nature; and to 
purify from the pollution of sin is to make the man 
what he ought to be in his purposes, choices, prefer- 
ences. In other words, to bring him to repentance 
or change of mind, to regenerate him, to persuade 
him to be and to act as he ought, this is to purify 
him from the pollution of sin. 

Expiation looks at sin as having guilt, as obliging 
God to inflict upon him its penalty. Expiation is 
symbolically effected by blood, the blood of the in- 
nocent victim made a sacrifice in the place of the 
sinner. Or, to apply the ritual language of the Old 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 87% 


Testament to the reality of the New, expiation is 
effected by the blood of Christ applied to the sin- 
ner, or the sinner’s guilt is removed when he ac- 
cepts the life that Christ gave up in his sacrificial 
death as the propitiation for the sinner’s guilt. It 
is propitiation when thought of as pleading with 
God for the sinner’s release from penalty; it is ex- 
piation when thought of as erasing the brand of 
guilt from the sinner. 

Now the sinner never receives either the expia- 
tion or the purification without receiving both; but 
in the order of thought the expiation comes first, 
just as in the ritual the blood preceded the water, 
the altar stood before the laver. 

So in the reality release from penalty brings 
_ about purification from pollution. The propitia- 
tion must be made by Christ, in order that the puri- 
fication may be effected by the Holy Spirit, 

Such, in brief, is the doctrine of the Old Testa- 
ment ritual, and of the New Testament gospel. 
These are the conceptions, or the philosophy, of 
how sin is taken away, and man is brought into 
favor and fellowship with God. And this doc- 
trine of atonement through the sacrificial death of 
Jesus Christ is the doctrine which the historicist 
sees plainly in the Scriptures and accepts as re- 
vealed by them. 

And this doctrine he accepts as in a system of 
truth, in which system he adores the sinless Son of 
God offering himself as a sin offering for him, an 
expiation available for man because Christ is man, 
a propitiation effective with God because Christ is 
God. 


88 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


But he who rejects the Virgin Birth of Jesus, 
and to do this is an antihistoricist in his estimate 
of Scripture, rejects, or tends to reject, this whole 
philosophy of the atonement. He sees in the death 
' of Christ an appeal addressed to man, revealing 
-God’s love, and persuading them to reconciliation 
with God; but he does not see in the death of Christ 
an appeal addressed to God, and presenting to him 
an adequate ground for remitting the penalty of 
sin to all who accept this mediation. 

The one takes away the obscurities wrapped 
about the pure truth in the bloody sacrifice, and 
never wholly removed by the prophets of deepest 
insight, nor even by Jesus as reported and inter- 
preted to us by his disciples, takes away these ob- 
scurations now, in the fuller light of modern dis- 
covery and progress, and shows in all its beauty 
and glory the pure love of God that needs no pro- 
pitiation of blood and death to persuade him to be 
kind to struggling man. The other accepts recon- 
ciliation with God by the death of his Son, strives 
to understand the mystery of the cross in the light 
of all that inspiration said before and of all that 
inspiration said after, and builds its hope on the 
revealed grace of God that provided this atone- 
ment, and not on the discovered greatness of man. 


VI. THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF 
SALVATION 
Those who admit that Jesus Christ is the Savior 
of men in any proper sense of the word hold to one 
or the other of these two views. One party be- 
lieves in salvation by education, and the other party 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 89 


in salvation by regeneration and education. That 
is, the one party holds regeneration necessary to 
start the process of salvation; both views agree that 
the process, once begun, is continued and com- 
pleted in the growth of the germinal life; but the 
one party holds that this germinal life is already in 
the man by nature, and the other party, that this 
germinal life must be created at the beginning of 
the process of salvation in each case. Inasmuch as 
the creation of the germ of life is really the persua- 
sion of the will to repentance, and this persuasion 
is by means of the truth playing upon the mind in 
the way of appeal to motive, and the awakening of 
the already existing germ is effected by similar 
means, the distinction between the two theories 
may seem to be more a matter of words than of 
theories; but really the distinction is fundamental. 

The Scripture calls the initiation of this new life 
a creation, a being born again, a resurrection from 
the dead. These might be strong figures of speech 
in some instances; but certainly, when we take all 
such representations together, we can hardly think 
them to be hyperboles. If it is possible to assert 
a beginning which is not a mere derivation, to as- 
sert the initiation of a new life which is not the 
product of forces or causes resident in the subject, 
but the creation by an agent outside the subject and 
acting upon the subject, the implantation of a seed 
of life and not the development of a germ of life 
already resident in the subject; then the Scripture 
writers mean to make this assertion. And when we 
ascertain what the Scripture writers mean to teach, 


90 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


that is God’s word to us, according to the histori- 
cist view of the Scriptures. 

The difference between the two views is like the 
difference about the birth of Jesus. The one party 
holds that Jesus is wholly derived by development 
from human parents; the other party holds that he 
is a new beginning not thus derived (insofar as he 
was not the son of a man but the Son of God.) So 
in regeneration the newborn child is indeed, if we 
may so say, mothered by human forces and agen- 
cies and grows naturally out of them so far, but is 
fathered by God in his creative power so that a 
life arises where before there was death, a life 
which belongs to a new species and is not a mere 
variation of the old species. 

The two schools will be equally insistent on the 
nourishment and culture of this life after it has been 
generated, and equally insistent on producing the 
conditions of its generation or awakening; for the 
regenerationist believes that some of the factors of 
this regeneration are supplied by human agency, 
and the educationalist believes that all the factors 
are thus supplied. But the regenerationist will rely 
on the power of God put forth in each case on pur- 
pose to effect the regeneration; and the education- 
ist will rely wholly on instruction and persuasion, 
on personal influence and environment to bring 
about the awakening of the dormant germ of life. 
For to him the germ of life is there, and only needs 
to be germinated; while to the believer in regenera- 
tion proper the seed of life is not there till 
implanted. 

While the difference is hard to state in words, the 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 91 


whole attitude of the two schools of thought will 
issue in practices utterly different. The one will 
teach the guilt and depravity of man, and his in- 
ability in himself, and therefore will know no way 
of saving men except by giving them the truth and 
waiting on the power of God to beget whom he will 
beget; the other will teach the nobility of human 
nature and the efficacy of ideals rightly and wisely 
presented, and therefore will know no way to save 
men except by appealing to their better nature and 
persuading them to be true to themselves and have 
confidence in themselves. The one will trust in 
Christ to raise the dead; the other will effect many 
awakenings and reformations without Christ, 
though it will gladly avail itself of the ideal so beau- 
tifully and successfully furnished by him. 

The one way of salvation is salvation by Christ; 
the other is salvation according to the method of 
Christ. According to this view, Christ shows men 
how to save themselves by developing their better 
selves; according to the gospel of grace he saves 
men. 


VII. THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 

Mat. 27: 50-61; Mk. 15: 37-47; Lk. 23: 46-53; 
and Jno. 19: 30-42 all record the explicit assertion 
that Jesus died on the cross. They report also, 
that the executioners pronounced him dead; that 
his side was pierced with a spear, and there came 
out blood and water; that after this he was taken 
down from the cross, wrapped in clean linen, and 
laid in the tomb; and that after thus handling his 


92 THE VIRGIN. BIRTH 


body his friends believed him dead. Moreover 
Mat. 27: 62-66 certifies that his enemies satisfied 
themselves that he was dead, sealed his sepulcher, 
and had it guarded, against the possibility that his 
body might be stolen; but they were convinced that 
there was no possibility of his not being dead. This 
testimony, unconsciously it may be, but none the 
less effectually, shuts out the possibility that he 
had not died, and the possibility that his body was 
stolen and a fake resurrection was imposed upon 
those who were so keenly concerned. 

Mat. 26: 1-7; Mk. 16: 1-7; Lk. 24: 1-9, 22-24; 
Jno. 20: 1-14 testify that the tomb was empty and 
the body gone. Stress is laid on the absence of the 
body. If the testimony is to be believed, the body 
was gone; and this absence of the body must be 
accounted for. When the women were told that 
he was risen, and the absence of his body was 
offered to them as evidence that he was risen, they 
believed that his resurrection involved the rising of 
his body,—they believed in his bodily resurrection. 

When the company of women met Jesus, saw 
him, heard him, and held him by the feet (Mat. 
28: 8-10), they. believed in his bodily resurrection. 

Jno. 20: 14-18 reports that Mary saw him; that 
he looked like a living man; that she recognized 
him by his voice; and that she held him by the 
feet. For he told her to quit holding him, as he 
had not yet ascended. Mary and the women cer- 
tainly believed in his bodily resurrection. There 
were strange things: his grave clothes were left in 
the grave, and his own every-day garments were 
divided among the soldiers who crucified him; and 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 93 


yet he appeared to these women in such form or 
appearance that they never thought about his cloth- 
ing or how he got clothing. But they would have 
testified to his bodily resurrection. 

We lack details of his appearance to Simon (Lk. 
24: 34), but not of his appearance to the two dis- 
ciples at Emmaus (Lk. 24: 13-35). Here was ap- 
pearance, voice, manner, and all the manifestations 
of body; but here also was that strange fact, “he 
vanished out of their sight.”’ The two disciples who 
witnessed this appearance would believe in the 
bodily resurrection, but would believe also that the 
body had undergone change and had properties that 
it had not had before the death. 

That same evening he appeared to the company 
of disciples in Jerusalem (Lk. 24: 36-43; Jno. 
20: 19-23). The doors were shut; yet he sud- 
denly stood in the midst of them. He showed them 
his hands and his feet and his side, and proved to 
them that he had flesh and bones. And he ate a 
piece of broiled fish before them. Thus he con- 
vinced them that he was not a ghost, notwithstand- 
ing his ability to appear to them behind their closed 
doors without opening the doors. They could not 
but believe in his resurrection of body; they could 
not but believe that he was risen in the same body 
in which he was crucified. 

A week later he appeared to the company of 
disciples again (Jno. 20: 24-29). This time he told 
Thomas to put his fingers into his wounds received 
in his crucifixion. So he convinced Thomas. 

He appeared as he had promised, to above five 
hundred at once (I Cor. 15: 6; Mat. 28: 16-20). 


94 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


Some doubted at first whether it was the same Jesus © 
whom they had known; but he assured them. 

And at his ascension (Lk. 24: 50-53; Acts 
1: 6-11). Just before he was taken up from them, 
he lifted up his hands and blessed them. Did he 
lift up the same hands that he carried about before 
his death? 

Thus they saw him, heard him, handled him, had 
him eat before them, and he explicitly denied that 
he was a spirit and asserted that he had flesh and 
bones. He convinced them that he stood before 
them in the same body in which he was crucified. 
About this there can be no question, if the Gospels 
correctly report the testimony and it is worthy of 
our belief. 

Now what shall we do with this evidence? The 
historicist accepts it as true and trustworthy, and 
believes with the disciples that Jesus Christ rose 
from the dead in the same body in which he had 
lived and in which he died, and in this body as- 
cended. They believe that the body was changed, 
greatly changed, so that it was indeed a different 
body, but yet the same. They believe that the 
risen Christ lived and appeared in a body, and that 
this was identical with the body that he had before 
lived and died in, although transformed never so 
much. Whatever changes his body underwent at 
his resurrection, or between his resurrection and as- 
cension, or at the ascension, however much it may 
have been changed or spiritualized, they believe 
that he rose and appeared and ascended and con- 
tinued in a body, his own body. When Paul says 
that his people do not rise with the “ same ” body, 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES 95 


they look again and see that Paul does not say 
“same.” And the very comparison that he makes, 
the plant from the seed, preserves the identity 
through all changes. He does say that the resur- 
rection body is incorruptible, glorious, powerful, 
spiritual; but he does not deny that the risen saints 
have a body, nor that it is identical with the body 
in which they have lived in this life, although it is 
changed, transformed, glorified. He does say that 
‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God,” “flesh and blood” being the expression 
which connotes corruption and mortality; but he 
does not thereby contradict the ‘ flesh and bones ” 
that Jesus affirmed of his resurrection body. Paul 
makes the resurrection body spiritual and immor- 
tal, each man’s own body glorified; but he does not 
deny body to the risen saints. 

But some who deny the Virgin Birth against the 
narratives deny also the resurrection against the 
narratives. Some of these deniers of the Virgin 
Birth, seeing that Christianity without the resur- 
rection of Christ is absurd, agree to allow a resur- 
rection, but not the resurrection of the body, or in 
any event not the resurrection of the same body. 

But we know the resurrection of Christ through 
the testimony of the witnesses. The very evidences 
which convinced them and must convince us are 
proven inadequate, if they do not establish his 
bodily resurrection. When the witnesses tell us 
that they saw him, heard him, handled him, saw 
him eat, identified him by the crucifixion wounds, 
and certify to us that it is the Jesus whom they 
knew in his ministry; if we smile at them, and say, 


96 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


“OQ you are mistaken, we believe you that Jesus 
lived on, and had a sort of spiritual resurrection, 
but we are too well informed to swallow your story 
that he had flesh and bones,” then we find them 
false witnesses of God. Between their clear cer- 
tainty and our hazy speculation is a great gulf 
fixed. 


VIII. THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE — 
COMING AGAIN 

There is much said in the New Testament, to say 
nothing of the expectation in the Old Testament 
not yet fulfilled, about the coming of Christ again; 
indeed, this is the great hope. 

There are three ways of interpreting these state- 
ments. One is to assume that in them there is given 
to us a definite scheme of future events, so that 
we may know beforehand what and when to expect 
this or that, and to understand the pictorial descrip- 
tions as we would understand them if they were 
plain narratives of the facts after the facts have 
taken place. In order to harmonize the different 
statements the users of this method will here and 
there yield to necessity and adopt forced or figura- 
tive interpretations; but they prefer generally 
literal, or what they call literal, interpretations. 
But their governing principle is to make the state- 
ments agree with history up to the present; and 
then project future history. And they are pos- 
sessed with the expectation of some great event in 
the near future. 

Two things result from this method. One is that 
interpretations change through the centuries and 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES st 


the years, as the expectation of some great event in 
the near future is disappointed. Another is that 
the users of this method are at all times a minority, 
but an earnest minority, intolerant of all who do 
not accept their interpretation. 

A third result is that many either reject this view 
for none, becoming on this subject agnostics, or go 
over to the other extreme, which virtually denies 
that there is to be any coming at all. In order to 
reach this denial and rest in it, forced interpreta- 
tions are resorted to, and fanciful interpretations 
called figurative; and the one effort is to eliminate 
all features that would leave a definite doctrine, 
and to eviscerate the statements of their meaning. 
The users of this method tend to say little about 
the coming again, and so to ignore it as having 
little or no practical value. 

Now comes in that view of Scripture which is 
most consonant with denial of the Virgin Birth, and 
which finds in Scripture misapprehensions of the 
past and therefore expects misapprehensions of the 
future; and those who hold this view tend, on the 
one hand, to insist on those interpretations which 
make Scripture to be most contradictory of histori- 
cal facts and most inconsistent with itself. They 
may at most get out of all the confused and mis- 
taken statements a hope that the teachings of Christ 
will gradually prevail among men until they per- 
meate and control human institutions, that is, his 
real teachings as sifted from the errors of their first 
reporters and from the errors of later interpreters, 
the pure teachings as now apprehended by the best 
minds among modern critics. 


98 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


Now between these extremes of fanaticism and 
agnosticism those who accept the Scriptures as re- 
vealing the will and promises of God, as revealing 
them clearly and intelligibly, ought to find prin- 
' ciples of interpretation that will get the following 
results: 1. Will interpret every statement in its 
intended sense, as literal, figurative, or what not. 
There may be paradoxes in Scripture, puzzles, and 
hidden meanings; but if so, they are findable and 
can be disentangled and understood. 2. Will in- 
terpret every statement in its own light rather 
than in the light of its supposed fulfilment. A pre- 
diction, to be profitable, to those to whom it was 
given, must have been intelligible to them. It is 
possible that a prediction was given of purposely 
hidden meaning; but if so, those to whom it was 
given could have seen that it was of hidden mean- 
ing and must wait on the event to be understood. 
But the true interpretation finds out what was in- 
tended and holds to that meaning. 3. Will find in 
the teachings about the coming again of our Lord 
much of practical value, and much that is indispen- 
sable to a full understanding of his teachings. If 
we find the truth, we shall be able to say, and to 
say it with enthusiasm and joy, Our Lord cometh. 

I am not here endeavoring to set forth the right 
view; but I would venture to sound two notes of 
warning. One is to those who really revere the 
Scriptures as the infallible word of God, and come 
to them to learn his mind. Let us be tolerant of 
each other and of our own limitations. There may 
be much of this teaching of the coming again of 
Christ that I cannot myself, or do not myself, alto- 


DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCES oY 


gether understand; but surely some of it is within 
my grasp. Let me take what I can and make use 
of it. Let me live in its light and consolation, and 
wait for fuller knowledge. And let us not be in- 
tolerant of each other. Let us get together and 
study together with humility, and endeavor to come 
to agreement. If I think I see what few others see, 
let me be humble and remember my fallibility. Let 
us seek to agree. 

And may I venture a word of warning to those 
who reject the Virgin Birth and with it have a ten- 
dency to empty the Scriptures of objective content? 
Jesus and his apostles certainly had a great expec- 
tation, which we speak of as his coming again. If 
you cannot make anything of it, and they 
seem to you by reason of their vagaries on this sub- 
ject largely unworthy of being implicitly followed 
as guides and the Guide, may it not be that herein 
you have missed the way? Since your mind is so 
different from the mind of Christ and the Apostles 
on this matter, may it not be that on other matters 
your mind is different from the mind of Christ and 
his Apostles? 


V 
CONCLUSION 


I. SUMMARY OF THE BEARING OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


HOSE who accépt the Virgin Birth will ac- 
cept certain other views, or will tend to 
accept them, or will at least be unable to 
disprove them; and those who reject the Virgin 
Birth will accept certain other views, or will tend 
to accept them, or will at least be unable to dis- 
prove them. This set of views let us, for conve- 
nience, call Modernism; that set of views, Scrip- 
turalism. 
The Scripturalist believes that Jesus Christ, as 
a matter of fact, had no human father, but was 
born of a virgin mother. He finds this expected or 
foreshadowed in Genesis, in the Old Testament ex- 
pectation of the Messiah, and definitely in the 
Tsaian prediction. He finds it certified by the tes- 
timony of Mary and Joseph in the New Testament, 
and amply corroborated. He finds the fact en- 
dorsed by Jesus, implied in the epithet Only Begot- 
ten, and originating the title The Son of God. And 
he finds it known to Paul and accepted by him. He 
believes it simply upon the testimony of Scripture. 
For the Scripturalist believes that the Scriptures 
is the intelligible and trustworthy word of God, re- 


liable in both its facts and its doctrines. Com- 
100 


CONCLUSION 101 


mitted to no mere mechanical theory of inerrancy, 
nor frightened away from confidence in it by the 
fear of not being sufficiently critical, he accepts the 
say-so of Scripture as final authority to him for 
both doctrine and practice. 

Accordingly the Scripturalist accepts the miracles 
recorded in Scripture as historical facts, though lit- 
tle concerned with philosophical disputations about 
miracles; sees in Jesus Christ two distinct natures, 
man in the fullest sense, and God in the deepest 
sense, alone sinless among men, and truly the Son 
of God in a sense in which no other being can be 
said to be; finds all other men incurably tainted 
with sin and cursed with its guilt, unless saved by 
his atonement; sees in him the propitiation and ex- 
piation of human guilt by his suffering as a sin 
offering substituted for the sinner who accepts him 
by faith, which faith is at once the beginning in the 
sinner of a new life created by God and the man’s 
own volitional commitment of himself to Christ; 
believes that he rose from the dead and ascended 
into heaven in his body, though changed and glori- 
fied; and expects him to come again in a coming at 
once manifest and spiritual, personal and subjec- 
tive, to all his people and to each of them, uniting 
them and himself in a society of complete persons 
like unto himself in soul and body. 

But the Modernist believes that Jesus had a 
human father like other men. The indications of 
an expectation of some wonderful birth from a 
virgin are poetic dreams or conceptions that come 
from other sources in the stream of Old Testament 
hopes. The New Testament has unfortunately 


102 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


been corrupted by the myth of a virgin birth of 
Jesus; but it rests on inadequate evidence, or is 
altogether a pious invention, if it be not in its first 
origin an invention to cover up an ugly fact. Jesus 
knew nothing of it, nor did Paul, nor any New Tes- 
tament writer but Matthew and Luke. The same 
source that got the story into these two books may 
have got some like indications into other documents, 
but there is no other unequivocal testimony, even 
if this is to be so considered. 

The Modernist believes that the Scriptures are 
the result of myths and legends that indicate the 
beliefs of the people of the age in which they origi- 
nated, with correcting and better views introduced 
from time to time, but never getting rid of all the 
errors. The same is true of the New Testament, 
only that here the finer insight of Jesus lifts him 
far above all other teachers, although unfortunately 
he was so misunderstood and misrepresented even 
in the Gospels, to say nothing of the Epistles, that 
we cannot take their reports of his teachings and 
deeds without critical excisions. In no proper sense 
is the Scripture authority. 

Accordingly the Modernist rejects the miracles, 
or such as he cannot reconcile with reason and sci- 
entific law, as we have come to know them since 
those times of childish superstition. Jesus is a man 
like other men, differing in this that God was in 
him to a degree in which he appears not to have 
been in any other man. What he was other men 
can be. Let him become our inspiration and ex- 
ample, and let us live and even die for others as 
he did; and we may approach him, and there is no 


CONCLUSION 103 


real reason why we may not equal him. We are 
saved by developing the best that is in us, and elimi- 
nating or overcoming or outgrowing our imperfec- 
tions. Of course, the conception of a bodily resur- 
rection is too crude for the modern mind to enter- 
tain; but the man who lives up to his best will rise 
into a higher life after death. | 

Not all Scripturalists hold fully all this system 
of views here ascribed to them; nor do all Mod- 
ernists go so far in freeing themselves from the 
conceptions of an age and culture thought by them 
to be now out of place; but here is what the two 
systems tend to become. Which is yours? 


II. OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT 


To the argument that I have built up I hear the 
modernist making objections, as follows: 

“‘ The whole argument proceeds upon an unsound 
philosophy. Back of all phenomena is a Cause, 
and we call it God. But God is inscrutable. He 
is even inconceivable by the human mind, because 
no human concepts encompass him. So we have 
to conceive him as if he could be comprehended in 
the concepts of our philosophy, and we conceive 
him as a person. But He is more than a person; 
he is not comparable to any object of our human 
thought. 

“ Accommodating our limited capacity to the 
necessity, we may conceive and represent God in 
concepts and by terms that we know are inadequate 
and only the picture of the truth. He is every- 
where and at all times; or rather space and time 
are themselves but concepts in which we hide our 


104 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


ignorance. But he is omnipresent, omniscient, om- 
nipotent. He is the universal force of energy, the 
ever developing potency, the continuous becoming. 

He is power, life, force, mind, self-realizing mind. _ 

“He hides and reveals himself. All creatures are 
revealing agencies, revealing God. He shines in the 
light; he sounds in the thunder and the song. He 
is in every bird and in every flower. He is in all 
history. He is in every living thing; he is the uni- 
versal life. But especially does he dwell in the 
human mind. He is that which lives in us. Pre- 
eminently in the human is God revealing himself, 
showing himself its sustaining and continuing 
power, its continually recreating power. 

‘He may dwell in one man to inspire him to sci- 
entific invention; in another, to inspire him to 
poesy; in another, to inspire him to philosophy; 
in another, to inspire him to religious insight. There 
have been many religious geniuses. In these God- 
filled men, the prophets of the race, was God. Some 
of them have seen deeper than others. Nor have 
they always seen alike or in harmony. But together 
they have led the race upward in its search after 
God. But in the religious geniuses of the Hebrew 
people are to be found the prophets of deepest in- 
sight, and through them God has striven, as it were, 
to express himself. Finally in Jesus, the finest 
product of the finest race in the matter of religion, 
God has come to his highest revelation. 

“Now the whole idea of a miracle is abhorrent to 
the instructed mind. A miracle, thrust in to inter- 
rupt and disarrange the orderly process of evolu- 
tion, is unthinkable to the mind that has once 


— 


CONCLUSION 105 


grasped the onward progress of the universal Force 
to its higher and higher manifestation in the in- 
spired mind. Inspiration and miracle are mutually 
exclusive. 

* So the notion of a Virgin Birth is monstrous. It 
would be to abandon the straight upward course of 
gradual progress, to repudiate the method of the 
reproduction of the race, and to create outside of 
the race, outside of humanity, an external savior, 
an external savior whose origin would be the con- 
fession that the method of the Mind that had been 
at work in all the process of development of the 
past was a mistake. It would be to abandon the 
plan and method of revealing God to man by an 
inner realization of God in man. The whole value 
of Jesus as a specimen for our imitation, and for 
Our encouragement in the slow progress upward, 
would be taken away. 

“Or consider how unscientific is such a notion. 
Through millions of ages millions of species have 
evolved from one simple beginning. In every step 
in all these billions of steps the onward urge has 
gradually made its way by an unerring law, with- 
out a break or exception, without a twist or deflec- 
tion. In astronomy, in geology, in biology, in the 
human being, everywhere in all the ages, there is 
no exception. ‘To the modern mind the birth of a 
child without a human father would be an unac- 
countable and irrational freak of nature; and 
freaks are not to be attributed to Infinite Wisdom. 

** And there are the results of modern criticism, 
analyzing the documents that make up our Bible 
as it now is, tracing the varied materials to their 


106 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


many sources, and following the wonderful trans- 
formation of them from myth and legend until 
gradually they have taken their places in this great 
religious library, in which we see how the human 
mind has struggled into better and higher concep- 
tions, and attained to nobler realizations of God, 
from time to time discarding errors and imperfect 
conceptions, until the process culminates in Jesus, 
the religious genius and leader of the race. And 
shall we now arrest all progress in religion, throw 
away all the lessons of progress in all other spheres 
of thought and inquiry, and stop in this upward 
progress of the race out of superstition and im- 
morality? Shall we now deny that God can any 
longer live in men to lead them up the heights to 
broader vision? Modern criticism has demon- 
strated the imperfections and positive mistakes in 
the Bible; and has thus set religion free from a 
fixed and final creed, that it may be a living and 
growing thing, and not a mummy wrapped in dry 
and rigid dogmas. 

“The dogma of the Virgin Birth may serve a good 
end in helping minds that are yet in the medieval 
stage of development to construe Jesus so as to 
revere him; but those minds that no longer need 
such a temporary refuge must be allowed the right 
to carry on their religious life and do their share in 
world betterment without being hampered by so 
grotesque a conception.” 


III. ANSWER TO THE OBJECTIONS 
I hear a Scripturalist replying thus: 
In appealing to Biblical criticism, the business of 


CONCLUSION 107 


which is to determine what facts have taken place, 
you assume the possibility of such a science. For 
the Bible is a fact, a record or pretended record of 
revelations; and if there may be any science of Bib- 
lical criticism, then it is possible on existing evi- 
dence to determine now how far its statements of 
fact are true, and whether it does contain any reve- 
lations. 'To begin with the assumption that there 
could be no revelations, and that its statements of 
fact could not be true, is to assume that the culti- 
vation of a science of Biblical criticism is a foolish 
waste of time. ‘There is no need to disprove by his- 
torical evidence, critically sifted, that this or that 
did not take place, if we already know philosophi- 
cally that this or that could not have taken place. 
Nor can the scientific historian determine before 
inquiry that any class of facts capable of being 
certified to by evidence has never taken place. How 
do we know what has taken place unless by evi- 
dence? Did a nation of two or three millions once 
cross the Red Sea on foot? If so, it could have 
been known at the time to competent witnesses, 
and their testimony could have been preserved and 
recorded for after ages. If anybody claims that 
such an occurrence did take place, the claim is 
properly met by a challenge to submit the evidence, 
such evidence as in the nature of the case could 
be available, but not by a philosophical disquisi- 
tion attempting to show that such an occurrence 
could not have taken place. So if once a multitude 
of several thousand people were fed a satisfying 
meal on a few loaves and fishes, such a fact lay 
within the sphere of observation; and the only sci- 


108 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


entific method in an inquiry about it is to get and 
weigh the testimony, and not to argue against the 
competence of all evidence and forestall a trial. So 
also concerning such an event as the resurrection 
of Jesus Christ from the dead. If he rose from the 
dead, and some one would have me so believe upon 
some speculative ground without the testimony of 
competent witnesses that knew him alive and dead 
and alive again, I may be excused from considering 
the claim; but if I am to pronounce judgment in 
the case after the presentation of evidence, then I 
cannot dismiss the witnesses unheard on the ground 
that I know such a thing never happened. My 
knowledge that such a thing never happened, if I 
have that knowledge, must rest upon precisely the 
sort of evidence that is offered to prove that in this 
case it did happen. All discussions of the nature 
of miracles is out of place; the scientific mind 
wants to hear and weigh the evidence, and then 
decide. 

I do not know what may take place except by 
experience, the experience of myself and others; 
and then after the facts I may build a philosophy 
of the facts, but not before. Here is a class of 
facts called miracles, facts of such a nature that, if 
they occur in certain connections with teachings 
that claim to be prophetic (revealed), they will 
convince reasonable minds acquainted with their 
thus occurring that the teachings are revealed; and 
these facts fall within the sphere of observation, if 
they have occurred before competent witnesses and 
by them couid be certified to us. To talk to me 
about the impossibility of such events is like chil- 


CONCLUSION 109 


dren babbling about a total eclipse of the sun or the 
fall of a meteor, claiming such a thing impossible. 
I am not asking whether miracles are possible; I 
am asking whether they did occur. I am not dis- 
puting whether the Virgin Birth could take place; 
T am asking whether it did take place. After I de- 
termine the fact this way or that, it will be time 
enough to philosophize about it. 

Now I have examined the evidence, and I am 
convinced that a revelation has been made: Now 
and then, where such certification would have been 
necessary, I find miracles coming in as needed for 
such certification; but a revelation has come. In 
the far beginning of human history, God speaks to 
man, promising him deliverance from the evil 
power. God teaches him by the flood, and scatters 
him from Babel. He calls a people in Abraham, 
redeems them out of Egypt, and organizes them 
through Moses, with covenant and law. God leads 
them through ages of conflict and discipline, train- 
ing them by ritual and tabernacle, by temple and 
song, by prophetic rebuke and chastisement, giving 
them promises of a Messiah and gradually educat- 
ing them for something better in the future. God 
adds teaching to teaching, never departing from the 
line first projected but ever developing that teach- 
ing from age to age. God comes to this people in 
his Son, a son of the race and yet the only begotten 
Son of God, gives a revelation in word and life, in 
death and glorification, making a new revelation, 
and yet the same old revelation clearer and fuller, 
of salvation from sin through his Son offered up as 
a sacrifice to expiate their sins. And God speaks 


110 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


from his glorified Son to his people, endues them 
with his Spirit, and sends them into all the world, 
with this message to all men. 

But let me go back and review again this pro- 
gressive revelation as it grows through the ages. At 
every step of its progressive development there is 
promise for the future, prediction for the future, 
Covenant and fulfilment. It thus exposes itself to 
detection if a delusion; it thus challenges unwilling 
minds to its claims, and locks itself from successful 
assault as a system of revealed truth, coming down 
through the ages, and ever growing as it comes. 

This progressive revelation is one. Every frag- 
ment of revelation made here or there falls into its 
place as part of the whole, a great unit. Did this or 
that miracle or deed or prediction occur? Rather 
this revelation has occurred, this one miracle run- 
ning through the centuries. Here is the FACT OF 
REVELATION. It is a rock, immovable, unas- 
sailable. It stands forever. The storms may blow, 
and the billows may dash against it. It still stands. 
Enemies may climb up its sides, and endeavor 
here and there to chisel off a piece. They only suc- 
ceed in chiseling off encrustations that hide its pol- 
ished splendor. They fall from their high perches 
into the gulf below; but there stands God’s Light- 
house for the ages. 

This is the miracle that abides. This is not some- 
thing within alone. This is an object, a fact with- 
out, the one fact that stands in history and shines 
in every direction. This is the miracle of miracles. 

Another miracle is going on, a subjective fact. 
This revelation from without is beating at the eye- 


CONCLUSION 111 


lids of the race, pouring its light into the human 
mind. With it as an instrument God is working his 
other great miracle, age after age, in the regenerat- 
ing of souls and of institutions. Something is rising 
in human history, a new heaven and a new earth, a 
society of love and justice and power, the kingdom 
of God. It comes, it grows. Now it may be sub- 
merged by clouds and billows, but ever again and 
again it flings up its rising sides in the sunlight. 
It laughs at decay. This miracle is predicted and 
promised by that miracle. This mighty growth is 
the temple of God that the centuries build. Within 
this new, rising in the midst of the old, there is life 
and growth, power and knowledge, continuance and 
immortality. Is Jesus Christ ever coming? He is 
in this reality. He dwells within it. He comes; 
we work. He comes; we suffer. He comes; we 
wait, but run to meet him. Lo, this mighty pile 
takes form, becomes intelligible, and stands there 
in the morning that is to be the glorious Christ and 
his people, the second incarnation of the Son of 
God. * 
“ THE WORD OF GOD ABIDETH FOREVER.” 


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